


As if there's more to flesh out

by muzzlemess (rustywrites)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Origin Stories, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drama, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mary Keay's A+ Parenting, Meet-Cute, Romance, Slow Burn, for fun and vibes, healthy use of time travel paradoxes, jokes about the 1980s, probably more references to ABBA than you'd expect, these tags make things sound much happier than they actually are
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26925544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustywrites/pseuds/muzzlemess
Summary: It shouldn't be happening. It's impossible -- like properly impossible, not just Spiral impossible. This door isn't even real, much less actually made of wood but --The latch snaps under their combined force and the door swings inward, somehow, rather than outward and both of them pitch forward and fall.There's a sound not unlike a lightbulb burning out.(A time travel AU where everybody lives and nothing is fixed.)
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley, Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 82
Kudos: 137





	1. A lesson in proper planning

**Author's Note:**

> I debated on doing this one as a chapter fic or if I should hold it until it's actually finished, but ultimately decided on the former if only to make my life on the editorial end of things easier. Rest assured, it's well underway and (knock on wood) I'll be able to keep a regular schedule with updates. 
> 
> A few notes: this is a time travel AU, but it's also just a proper AU. It'll be pretty obvious once you get going but just off the top, this takes place in a world where Tim, Sasha, and Gerry are all still very much alive and employed by the Institute. There will be more diversion from canon events and timelines but hopefully those will be very obvious to pick out as well. 
> 
> Content warnings are, as usual, no different from a regular episode. I'll be sure to tag as I go if anything crops up that needs to be noted. 
> 
> Title is from the **[Lowercase Noises song](https://open.spotify.com/track/2zw43GltZeN9sLGH1wOoFf?si=_XxRzgalSXCFKV-us6FxwQ)** of the same name.

Things go to hell in a handbasket very rapidly, as per usual. 

The 'rapid' part is very important. Gerry Keay likes to believe that, if they were to just slow down a little bit, maybe he could, y'know, prevent some damage. Get a head of it. He is something of a professional, after all -- but no. When things go south in his line of work they tend to do it swiftly and without any real warning. 

Like now, for instance. 

When Jon had called him in to deal with a persistent branch of The People's Church skulking about in rural Ireland, abducting people from communities for whatever freaky shit they got up to, it all sounded very simple. If you were prepared for it, The Dark wasn't hard to handle. Gerry had loaded up a trunk with some industrial floodlights, enough torches to light up a grade school theater production, and a sizable collection of long-lasting candles should the batteries and back-up batteries fail (which has happened before). Then he'd said his goodbyes to Tim and Sasha, let Marin pretend he'd forgotten something so he could run back and canoodle with Jon for a few minutes, and they'd headed on their way. 

Even the drive had been excruciatingly boring. The entire Institute had come to the unanimous agreement several years back that, whenever possible, driving or taking trains was preferable to flying if only to avoid any intense and unanswerable questions from airport security about the materials they were traveling with and the potential for mysteriously lost baggage. The Vast wasn't the only entity out there capable of sabotaging more precarious travel plans, though it was usually the most lethal, and really, whenever possible, it just wasn't smart to let your equipment leave your sight. 

Of course there were exceptions to this rule -- it wasn't always feasible, not everywhere was reachable by car, the list went on. But for low level stuff like this, driving had the highest cost-risk ratio, and -- well. Three cheers to him and Martin for drawing the short straw this time around, Gerry supposed. 

Not that he had any problem with Martin. He was perfectly lovely. The two of them just tended to have very different approaches to things, was all, even down to the way they dressed. It made them a very odd couple on the road, a heavily pierced and tattooed goth riding shotgun with someone who could pass as a jumper-wearing assistant professor. Still, over the years Gerry had learned to appreciate how stealthily funny Martin really could be, under all the cozziness that made him easy to write off as the team mom or something. They got on great. It was just the job that sucked sometimes. 

The first leg of the nearly 10-hour journey had been comfortably quiet -- Gerry preferred it to small talk, really, and liked to keep the radio on in lieu of conversation, but now in the back half with the sun well set and Martin at the wheel, it was time to chat, apparently. If only to keep the both of them awake and from dying in a horrific crash somewhere on the highway. 

Martin was clearly running out of questions for Gerry to half-heartedly answer, so he finally picked up the slack and went for the personal topics. All it took was a casual "so, how are things between you and Jon going?" And Martin was bright pink and sputtering about how Gerry had gotten it wrong and they weren't like that, and it wasn't going to -- how could he have -- it was --

Gerry's laugh was enough to kickstart his second wind and keep him awake in the passenger seat for the rest of the ride, and enough to keep Martin ping-ponging wildly between fierce dienals of his crush and absolutely embarrassing gushing about how handsome Jon was that the risk of an accident was no longer a clear or present danger. 

The peace and tranquility of checking into their tiny little inn and unloading all their gear for the trek up to the spooky corner of the woods The People's Church had apparently cordoned off lasted about fifteen minutes.

Unfortunately, neither Gerry nor Martin had really taken the time to consider that arriving here in the middle of nowhere around 3 in the morning, otherwise known as the dead of night, was maybe a colossal error in judgement on both of their parts for a job that required dealing with a cult that worships the unholy power of darkness. 

Gerry barely had time to process what had happened when his door was kicked in and a bag was shoved over his head. In the same motion, his arms were wrenched behind his back and secured with what he can only assume was a zip tie. 

The next few minutes were a bit of a blur. 

The clutists had, unsurprisingly, begun immediately dragging him back out of the room literally kicking and screaming, which earned him a kick to the gut that winded him. It was impossible to tell exactly what was happening around him, but he could hear Martin having a similar struggle -- fuck, poor Martin. Gerry was mostly used to this sort of thing, really. Martin had become perhaps more accustomed to it than he would have liked, given the Institute's history, but that didn't mean he was really predisposed for it, or good at it. He shouldn't have come. Gerry should have seen the trap. He should have been ready for it. They shouldn't even be here. Fuck.

_Fuck._

He tries to calm his breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Martin isn't screaming or anything, so that's a good sign. The Dark is a tricky bitch on the best of days, or nights as it were, but at least it wasn't The Desolation or something miserable like that. It could be worse. It could always be worse. He just needs to think. 

Hands on his shoulders jostle him back, unbalancing him painfully onto his restrained wrists. They're loading him into -- a van, maybe? Something moving. Christ. 

"Martin?" He doesn't bother trying to keep his voice down, even though it earns him another kick to the stomach. 

Martin's hurried, hushed, "I'm here, I'm okay," is almost drowned out by the sound of his own subsequent wheeze. So at least there's that. 

Whatever they've been loaded into is moving, bumbling along the backcountry roads into what Gerry feels safe guessing to be the forest. Knowing The People's Church, there was going to be some kind of lake, maybe, a clearing, something with a view of an astrological event of some kind. They weren't exactly the most creative lot, which also probably meant that Gerry and Martin were on the menu as sacrifices or some other nonsense. There'd probably be a lot of them. All their equipment was packed up, left back in their rooms. Gerry had a knife in his boot he could maybe get to if he was very lucky but they were otherwise unarmed. 

Someone had a walkie talkie. It clicked on, choppy radio signal and a language Gerry didn't recognize off the top of his head -- Finnish maybe? Sweedish? Sounded like a confirmation of some sort. 

The van -- or whatever it was -- rolled to a stop. 

And that's when things went from bad to extremely fucking weird. 

For a moment, all Gerry could hear was absolute silence. No animals, no wildlife sounds -- to the point that it actually made him doubt that they'd ended up in the woods at all. And then he heard moving. He hadn't had time to count how many people had actually come and taken them, but if he had to guess, there were at least 5. They were shifting around, mumbling to one another. It sounded confused. 

A door opened -- but it didn't sound like a car door? Where was --

Another door open, the van this time, definitely.

There was a fantastic bout of commotion. 

Someone screamed.

A _bunch_ of people screamed. 

Over the noise, Gerry tried to call for Martin again, tried to shift and shimmy in his restraints, even if he could just get the fucking bag off his head, if he could just --

Someone was laughing, but it didn't sound right. It sounded like --

Gerry said: "Oh, fuck me," just as the bag was torn off his head. It was dark, still, so his eyes needed no time to adjust to the looming, maniacal face hovering just in front of his own, smile too wide and too long for its face curling up at both ends, blood splattered and hypnotic and completely impossible. 

Distantly, Gerry was aware that he was surrounded by carnage. The handful of cultist who had taken them had met up with maybe ten more, all of whom were laying in various states of dismemberment on the ground 

"There you are," Michael grinned, giddy, peering down at Gerry with the air of a cat who had finally cornered a mouse it had been stalking for a great long while. 

Gerry tried to inventory anything he could have done in recent memory to get on The Spiral's bad side, aside from just existing in general. The Spiral did tend to take some umbridge with things that existed. And speaking of --

As subtle as he could, given his current state of homebrew bondage, Gerry looked over his shoulder to see Martin, still very much bagged but alive, clearly, based on the way his chest was heaving. 

Michael noticed.

He laughed, bright and loud in a way that made Gerry flinch, feeling every blood vessel in his head react to the sound. 

"Oh, don't worry, I'm not here for him, I don't care about him. I'm here for you." 

Gerry blinked. 

Michael leaned in closer still, reaching one of his disgustingly misshapen hands out and weaving his fingers through the collar of Gerry's shirt. "Nothing to say for yourself?"

"I don't --" It was incredibly hard to think, much less speak at all when a creature who had knives for hands was practically holding you by the throat. Michael seemed very unimpressed by this and wrenched Gerry to his feet. 

From the new perspective, the carnage of The People's Church sect was even more apparent. The air smelled rancid already, thick with the metallic tang of blood and mud. 

"You are playing games you cannot possibly comprehend, Gerard Keay. Did you think you would finish the job your Archivist started?"

The Spiral often dealt in non-sequiturs, so Gerry couldn't rightly be surprised by this, but he still felt abundantly lost. "Jon?"

Michael's face contorted at this, grin instantly replaced by a horrifying, fractal snarl, " _No!_ Gertrude Robin--" His face flickered, twisting in and out of Gerry's perception as he broke off into what Gerry could only assume was the extremely inhuman equivalent of a frustrated growl.

Gerry had never been an expert in The Spiral -- no one was, really -- but he didn't need to be to understand that something was very, very wrong here. Also, it was very, very likely he was going to die as a result. He tried to look over to where Martin had managed to right himself, back pressed against the inside of the van, sitting as still as possible but hopefully listening. At some point, thank god, Martin had managed to swoop his bound arms under himself to his front and pull the bag off his head. The two of them made eye contact. Martin mouthed what Gerry really hoped was 'keep him talking' but could have been 'what's he doing' or really anything -- lip reading had never been his strong suit, especially not in the dark in the middle of a life-or-death catastrophe. 

"Gertrude is dead, Michae--" he got most of the name out, as calmly as he could, before Michael reacted again, practically howling, using his grip to throw Gerry to the ground. He landed in an ungraceful heap, ears ringing, equilibrium struggling to catch up. 

"Shut _up, shut up!_ " Michael roared, his voice sounding like three different frequencies and pitches all at once. He rounded on Gerry before he even had a chance to stand, "I don't know what you're _doing_ to me! I'll kill you, I'll kil--" It sounded like he was choking. It sounded like he was in pain.

Gerry knew he had to take the chance. He twisted himself around, trying to get away, at least get him away from Martin. But unlike Martin, he hadn't had time to bring his zip-tied arms around to his front so getting any sort of balance was almost impossible. Thankfully, Michael seemed to be thoroughly distracted by...whatever this apparent meltdown was. He'd dug his hands into his own hair, which coiled around the knife-like edges of his fingers like vines. It looked like he was trying to literally tear himself apart. 

Expecting the unexpected was part of the job, but even this felt dramatically out of his league. Running would be pointless, especially in the dark but he couldn't just stay here and let whatever this was take its course -- if he could just get Michael further away from Martin, that would at least be --

He scanned the clearing. There was only one source of light in addition to the van's taillights and the moon. A yellow door, attached to nothing, standing about 10 feet away from where Gerry stood now. It wasn't actually glowing, but its weird paint seemed to hold light anyway, like it was standing in a well-lit hallway and not the middle of a forest. 

That's when Gerry had what may be the stupidest idea of his entire life. 

In one clumsy motion, he pitched himself forward and ran toward the door, full tilt, just barely keeping himself from toppling over as Michael makes a sound somewhere between television static and wounded animal. 

Michael moves without moving, but Gerry's entire body weight crashes into the door, shoulder first, before Michael could actually get a hand around his neck and somehow, against all logic or form of reason, Gerry hears the sound of wood splintering. 

It shouldn't be happening. It's impossible -- like properly impossible, not just Spiral impossible. This door isn't even real, much less actually made of wood but -- 

The latch snaps under their combined force and the door swings inward, somehow, rather than outward and both of them pitch forward and fall. 

There's a sound not unlike a lightbulb burning out. 

In an instant, the door is gone and Martin Blackwood finds himself in the clearing very much alone.


	2. Lights are gonna blind you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something isn't right.

Throughout his life, Gerry Keay has woken up in some pretty strange places, and almost never for fun reasons. Like, now, for instance. Returning to consciousness face down in the dirt to a healthy rain with your hands zip tied behind your back was not exactly ideal. 

Every bone in Gerry's body ached as he clumsily worked himself to his feet, spitting out errant strands of grass as he went. Nothing, as far as he could tell, was broken or actively bleeding, so that was a bonus, but he still felt very much banged up and his head was swimming, almost like a hangover. He got all the way to his feet before he realized he needed to get back down again to weave his arms under his body and bring his hands to his front. It wasn't the most graceful maneuver but it worked, at least. Thank god for Institute-funded self defense courses and a phenomenally fucked-up childhood for instilling such valuable skills in him as second nature. 

Honestly, the fact that he was even waking up at all was taking a few minutes to settle into his head. He hadn't exactly expected to come out in one piece when he threw himself at Michael's door, much less to just...not actually go anywhere, apparently. The sun was up, only barely managing to peak its way through the gloom of the rain clouds, but definitely up. Gerry figured he must have been out for at least a decent handful of hours, which made everything else all the more bizarre. 

The clearing was completely empty, no signs of anything untoward at all -- no bodies, no van, no tire tracks, no Martin --

Shit. Martin. 

He awkwardly shifts his body around, patting down his pockets in hopes to find his cell phone but was unsurprisingly disappointed. It's most likely still sitting on the nightstand of the inn they'd checked into a couple kilometers down the road. He'd have to walk back on foot.

Maybe Martin had managed to call in back-up or something while Gerry was….unconscious? What exactly was he? The fact that his clothes were so wet would seem to indicate that he had been laying there in the dirt for at least an hour. It seemed impossible that anyone else could have come and just left him here. And honestly, what kind of 'back-up' could even be called in? What was Martin going to do? Ring Sasha and ask her to send a chopper or something? 

No, something was definitely not right. 

But also Gerry obviously wasn't dead, so it couldn't be _that_ wrong, now could it?

But then again, The Spiral had been involved so there was a good chance that Gerry was just out of his mind now. This could all be an illusion. Some sort of insidious trap. 

He does a full 360, scanning the tree line. 

A very curious squirrel is the only thing he spots moving around. It stares back at him for a split second before scrambling away into the leaves. It does not return to attack him or otherwise turn into a monster. 

If this is some sort of slow burning hallucinatory Spiral trip, it's a very, very tame one. 

He heaves a sigh. Only thing left to do now is get back to the inn, get what's left of his shit, and call someone to come pick them up after he makes sure Martin is indeed okay. 

But first, he'll need to get his hands out of this zip-tie. He's not about to walk however many kilometers looking like some sort of deranged, escaped convict. Not that he's likely to see any passing motorists on the way or anything but, on the off chance he can hitchhike, he'd like to not look like a walking campfire story. 

The knife in his boot is, thankfully, still there, which saves him the trouble and annoyance of having to dislocate one of his thumbs to slip his hand out of the bindings. He'd done it before and would rather not repeat it. Sawing through the plastic is annoying and very, very awkward but eventually it does work and dealing with some cramped fingers is better than having to pop anything back into place, so he'll take what he can get. 

The lack of tire tracks continues out of the forest and back towards the road, which is even more bizarre. The rain fall ought to have made them muddy and more obvious, not the other way around. The whole thing puts Gerry even more on edge as he starts his trek in earnest, keeping an eye on the road for anyone he might be able to try and hitch a ride with.

No one comes. 

By the time he arrives at the little inn, the rain has stopped. His hair is dripping. He's sure he looks absolutely filthy. He cannot wait to take a shower and change. 

But the Institute-owned car they'd driven up is not in the lot. 

The hair on the back of Gerry's neck stands up, for some reason, at that. 

This isn't right at all. 

If Martin -- no, he wouldn't have just left and then packed up and driven out of the country without him. There was no possible way. 

The man tending the front counter is not the one who checked them in the night before. He eyes Gerry with a mixture of both extreme concern and suspicion that Gerry can only assume is warranted by his appearance. He doubts rural Ireland gets many mud-covered, rain-soaked, heavily tattooed goths. He tries to smile politely as he approaches; show he means no harm. 

"Hello, uh. Sorry, I had a bit of an accident, hiking, early this morning and I'm afraid I left my room key behind. Can I be let back into my room?" Seems as safe a lie to go with as any. 

The man raises one greying eyebrow. "When did you say you checked in?"

Gerry does his absolute best to make himself look as non-threatening as possible. There's a TV on in the corner of the lobby area -- a really old one he hadn't noticed before. But it had been late when they'd gotten here so that wasn't really surprising. Something's weird about it. Like the signal isn't strong, or the screen hasn't been cleaned in a while. "Last night, late. A young woman was here checking us in -- I came with a cowor -- a friend. Name should be Gerard Keay?"

The man keeps looking at him, the incredulous expression unmoving. "Only people who work here are my wife and I. We didn't have anyone check in last night. Are you sure you're alright? Looks like you could have hit your head out there, took a tumble." 

He's politely trying to ask if Gerry is concussed or hungover, and honestly, at this point, Gerry is kind of concerned he might be. 

The TV cuts to a news broadcast. A woman with very permed hair sits at a desk and announces thanks everyone for watching. She looks...odd. The whole thing looks very, very odd. Gerry turns himself completely to face the screen. 

"And now we'll present the top stories," the woman announces in her clear, clipped accident, "of Thursday, 24th March, 1983."

Gerry's ears start to ring. 

"Uh," he tries to cough, clear his throat to keep from croaking as he turns back to the now very obviously concerned man behind the counter. "May I use your phone please?"

Thankfully he doesn't need convincing. Just pulls out an old rotary thing and sets it on the counter top. 

Gerry mentally pats himself on the back for taking the time to memorize the Institute's phone number years and years ago in a fit of rebellious rage as a kid still trying to worm his way out from under his mother's thumb any way he could. He doesn't think it's changed. He dials it and brings the receiver up to his ear. 

"Thank you for calling The Magnus Institute," an unfamiliar voice answers after several rings. "How may I direct your call?" 

"The archives, please -- I'd like to talk to, the, uh, the Archivist?" He answers after swallowing hard again. He'd almost reflexively said 'Jon.' 

"One moment please," the receptionist pleasantly responds. He can hear her click something over and then hold music cuts in on the line. It's a badly garbled recording of ABBA's 'Super Trouper.' A disco pop ear worm has never sounded more ominous. 

Gerry already knows what's going to happen. He knows it in his bones. But still, he feels his entire world tilt on its axis when a voice finally picks up the other end of the line and says: "Gertrude Robinson speaking." 

" _Fuck_ ," is the first thing out of his mouth. The man behind the counter shoots him a warning glance.

"Excuse me?" Gertrude says over the receiver, simultaneously. 

"I--" Gerry almost swears again, swallows it back. "I'm sorry, uh -- ma'am. Sorry. This is all going to sound very strange and I'm afraid I can't exactly explain it over the phone but my name is Gerard Keay and I think I need your help." 

The man looks, if possible, more concerned listening in. Gerry fights back a wince and tries to angle his body away from the counter, as if that would help. 

"My help?" Gertrude's voice is understandably suspicious. "In what manner?" 

"I, uh. I've had a run-in with The Spiral." He doesn't really _want_ to pull the name drop but he needs her to know he's not just some nut job. "I know you know what that means and I can explain, but I'm--" He takes a breath, considering how to land this next part. "I'm currently in Ireland." His tone makes it sound like a question, because in a way it is. 

Gertrude is quiet for a moment. Gerry holds his breath. 

"I see," she finally allows, suspicion still deeply laced into her voice, but now it's mixed with something else. Maybe curiosity? Gerry can't tell. "And you're asking for passage to London?" 

"Yes." 

Another pause. Gerry can hear what sounds like the scratch of a pen against paper. 

"There will be a ticket waiting for you at the Aer Lingus counter of the Dublin Airport. I assume you will know how to get here from Heathrow when you arrive." 

He does. "I do."

"Good. Give your name to the receptionist when you arrive, I'll be waiting." Without another word, the line goes dead, leaving Gerry standing there, blinking into space for a second before he hangs up in kind. 

"Thank you," he says, sheepish, to the man whose browline has gone from curiously arched to deeply furrowed. "Could you, ah, help me call a cab?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ABBA's [Super Trouper](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHPrbfng_Nw) album was the biggest selling album in the UK in 1980, according to wikipedia. Also it rules and I feel a little bad for reducing it to shitty hold music but at least the Institute has good taste.


	3. Stay gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chance meeting.

By the time his flight lands -- he'd honestly forgotten how insanely lax airport security used to be -- Gerry feels like a dead man walking, even more than he did immediately upon waking up in that god forsaken clearing. He's filthy. His hair feels greasy. His wrists have a set of very suspicious zip-tie shaped bruises ringing them. He really wants to do nothing more than go home and sleep.

But he doesn't have a home, because he technically hasn't even been born yet. 

So far, the only small win he'd been able to achieve in this entire mess was finding a cigarette vending machine, which was weird in and of itself, where he could buy a carton for just under a pound. And he'd been allowed to smoke on the flight itself, which felt insane and not to mention insanely rude, but he really couldn't be bothered by that right now. Besides, it wasn't like he was the only one doing it. He used the hour or so to try and fish up any relevant information from a newspaper he'd picked up before boarding. 

It was March, 1983. People were very excited about the Culture Club and Billy Joel, chiefly because these new fangled things called 'compact discs' had only recently gone on sale. Patrick Swayze is about to star in the movie version of The Outsiders, which Gerry briefly recalls having watched a few times as a kid. It's nothing useful but at least it feels too specific to be a hallucination -- though it's still entirely possible that this is all in his head and he's actually somewhere deep within The Spiral being slowly digested. Maybe The Spiral had spent however many centuries compiling useless pop culture trivia to ensure the authenticity of exactly this sort of trap. He can't say. 

And, honestly, as he finally scrapes himself out of the plane and to the tube station, he's not sure if a slow, agonizing supernatural death would be better or worse than his current situation. 

At least it doesn't take as long as he would have expected to make his way from the airport to the Institute, and his money's holding out extremely well. Everything is so much cheaper than he's used to. 

The poor receptionist looks like she's about to call security to have him thrown out before he manages to get out that he's here to see Ms. Robinson. He nearly falls asleep in the chair she asks him to wait in. 

It takes about fifteen minutes for him to be given a visitor's pass and pointed down the stairs and through the halls to the Archive proper. He doesn't bother trying to explain that he already knows where to go. 

It's...weird to see the name Robinson on the Head Archivist's office door, rather than Sims. But it's far from the weirdest thing about this, so he supposes he can stomach it. 

Gertrude, for her part, doesn't actually look all that much different than she did when Gerry knew her. Not that he ever really "knew" her -- their overlap at the Institute had been brief before she died. Still, she had been his boss for a period, so there was that, and he, of course, knew her by reputation thanks to his mom, so there was also that, too. 

Strangely, aside from being a decade or so younger than the image Gerry has of her in his mind, her features were all completely unmistakable. All hard lines and sharp eyes, neat and orderly, the phrase 'no nonsense' given life as a human being. 

"Gerard Keay?"

Gerry feels his back go rigid as he steps into the room completely, making sure to close the door behind him. "Yes."

She wastes no time, just gestures to one of the chairs across from her desk as she asks, "What do you know about The Spiral?"

It's all Gerry can do to not cradle his head in his hands as he slumps into the seat. "Everything I'm about to say is going to sound completely insane."

"Go on."

"I'm from the future?" May as well just come out with it. It doesn't sound nearly as confident as Gerry would have liked. 

Gertrude does not laugh. Her lips press into a thin line.

Gerry swallows and holds up a hand, as if she had protested. "I know. It's -- okay, I'm actually from the year 2018. I work here. Or I will work here. I was working a job with a coworker, trying to ensure The People's Church Of The Divine Host...you're aware of them now, right? You must be. Maxwell Rayner's been around for like a hundred years. We were trying to make sure they couldn't cause trouble so my coworker -- my _friend_ and I were in Ireland when a, uh. There's this creature that's related to The Spiral, it calls itself Michael. We don't know a lot about it. It attacked us and, anyway, I tried to get away and in the process something went -- well, now I'm here." 

By the end of his burst of exposition, Gerry feels winded. 

Gertrude's expression does not change. She allows the silence to stretch for a moment that feels endless.

"I suppose," she allows, finally, "I should take some comfort in the fact that the Institute continues to exist in the year 2018, if you are indeed telling the truth -- and, given the details in your story, I'm reluctantly inclined to believe that you are." She pauses a moment, folding her hands across the top of her desk. Gerry feels the strangest combination of relief and dread wash over him. "However, the idea that The Spiral may be capable of something like time travel is deeply troubling, in addition to the myriad issues that present themselves the moment you begin accounting for such a thing in any of our work, related or otherwise." 

Gerry opens his mouth, prepared to jump in, but Gertrude continues. "Also, we are currently unaware of any creatures or avatars of The Spiral that use the pseudonym 'Michael,' nor do we have any information relating to a link between The Spiral and The People's Church." 

"We don't either," Gerry finally jumps in. "The second part, I mean. The creature -- Michael -- we've been dealing with it for a while. I don't know when it was first recorded. It might have had another name, or it might change names. But I don't know why it attacked us when it did, it's been a nuisance before but it's never been this aggressive. And it didn't seem to have anything to do with The Dark. Like it being there at all was a coincidence, or something. Knowing The Spiral it could have been."

"Hm. Indeed." Gertrude reaches up to adjust her glasses, turning to the typewriter on her desk -- no computers yet, Gerry reminds himself, at least no sensible ones -- where she types out a handful of words with a swift _tak-tak-tak_ and then reaches down to pull out an analogue tape recorder. It must have been in a drawer. It's been running. 

Of course it's been running. Gerry's known Jon long enough to know the score. He should have seen this coming. 

"Are you about to ask me for my statement? Because I think I just gave it to you. Also, I also don't know when I slept last." 

"What you've already said will suffice for now. I'm going to ask that you continue to provide as much insight as you can while we try and sort out whatever this is." She sets the recorder down and clicks the stop button. The tape whirls to a halt. She pops it out and takes a felt tipped marker to it. A statement number. 

"That's fair -- I'll -- look, I'll help however I can but I currently have nowhere to stay, nothing but the clothes on my back, and I'll be completely honest, all I really want to do is sleep and then deal with everything else later.." He is, he will admit, being perhaps a bit more rude than he normally would be in a situation like this, but he can't really bring himself to care. 

Gertrude sets the tape aside after snapping it into its case. "We have a make-shift safe room set aside here in the office. There are cots and an assortment of toiletries." Gerry knew this, now that he thinks about it -- he remembers Martin staying in the Archives for several weeks after a nasty encounter with The Corruption. It hadn't even occurred to him until this exact moment. "There is an employee shower and restroom, seldom used but, well, I assume you're aware of it, are you not?"

He was. He'd never used it but knew it was there, part of the more academic side of the Institute meant to facilitate all-nighters for researching staff members. He nods as Gertrude slides the tape into her desk drawer and pushes it shut. 

"I will make these accommodations available to you until for now," she concludes before producing a key with a single white tab for a keychain and sliding it across her desk. 

"Thank you," Gerry says finally, feeling about two steps behind in this whole process as his brain struggles to keep up. He can hear the unspoken 'so I can keep an eye on you' dangling at the end of Gertrude's invitation, but doesn't bristle. He's not trying to hide anything and, really, can't begrudge the caution. 

He takes the key and stands, knees cracking loudly, embarrassingly, as he does. Gertrude never volunteered directions -- a test, he figures, but one he'll pass easily. He knows his way around, and it'll be nice to give her one more reason to trust him. 

Unfortunately, he gets about half a step out of her office before colliding headlong with yet another problem. Apparently, because time is against him on all fronts, he'd only managed to open the door seconds before someone had leaned in to knock, and because Gerry is currently half out of his mind with the world's most potent anxiety/confusion/insomnia cocktail, he hadn't exactly been looking where he was going. It's only a small miracle that the near-knock didn't turn into an inadvertent punch to Gerry's face. Instead, the force of his forward movement nearly knocks the poor guy over. 

"Oh! Bl-- sorry! So sorry!" 

Gerry regains his balance in time to see a very frazzled looking blond shifting his grip on a stack of manilla folders against his chest. His face is pulled into a shocked grimace, eyes wide behind large, coke-bottle glasses. "Wasn't looking where I was going, was I? So sorry." He continues, hurried and flushed red with embarrassment all the way to his ears and --

Oh, fuck. 

Gerry doesn't recognize him as much as he _does_. How could he not? It's not him but it -- there's absolutely no mistaking. His pulse pounds in his throat as he tenses up because it's _him_ \-- it's _it_ \-- it's --

"Michael. May I help you?" Gertrude interjects from the office. _Michael_. 

Gerry feels his body ready for a fight-or-flight moment as he glances frantically, from Gertrude to Michael and back, waiting for some sort of -- for _any_ sort of sign. But nothing happens. Reality never begins to cascade in fractals around him, his brain doesn't start melting out his nose and ears, there's no immediate sense of a trap being sprung at last.

Gertrude meets his gaze with a stern glare, the sort that says 'we'll talk about this later' without saying anything at all. Michael, for his part, looks extremely confused. 

He also seems extremely human. Looking at him doesn't make Gerry's eyes hurt. His hands, where Gerry can see them against the file folders, are normal. His eyes are blue. His shape is unchanging, aside from the nervous fidget he's developed over the course of this interaction, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. 

"I uh -- sorry, about that?" Michael tries again, hesitant, like he's not certain Gerry speaks English. "And, ah, yes, Ms. Robinson, I found those files you were looking for, I figured I would drop them off before I went home for the evening but, uh." He looks back to Gerry with a little nod, "I didn't realize you were busy." 

It's then that Gerry realizes he's still very much blocking the door. "Oh. Uh. Yeah, sorry about that." He takes a step back, pivoting to make even more direct eye contact with Gertrude, whose expression still has not changed. 

She knows. Of course she knows. How could she _not_ know. 

"That will be all, Gerard." 

There's nothing for him to do, not without risking getting himself kicked out, or worse, attacked by monsters from all sides. So he keeps his mouth shut as he turns back to the door. He'll just have to deal with it later, assuming he gets a later and, honestly, he's so tired that maybe he's just hallucinating. That's a thing, right, even for normal people with normal lives? Seeing similarities that aren't really there? Or maybe he'll fall asleep and wake up somewhere else, some real Wizard of Oz shit -- that certainly seems like a Spiral-appropriate turn for all of this to take. Or maybe he'll wake up and find that strangely human version of Michael looming over him ready to strike.

At least he'll have had a shower and a nap in any of these scenarios. Silver linings. 

He doesn't see any other Institute employees in the halls as he makes his way to the safe room. The shower he takes is quick and perfunctory, but makes him feel briefly alive again, at least alive enough to remember to kick his boots off before collapsing face-first into the nearest of the room's several military-style bunks. 

He doesn't dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said "weekly" updates but I'm editing faster than I anticipated, so. Also here are some notes:
> 
> \- It was totally legal to [smoke in most commercial airlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflight_smoking) until 1990. (I _know_ )
> 
> \- Patrick Swayze played [Darry Curtis](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/theoutsiders/images/3/3c/426bd9be7cb62d4464af0a31399764cf.jpg/revision/latest/top-crop/width/360/height/450?cb=20140821212907) in The Outsiders and Gerry absolutely had an awkward pre-teen crush on him as a kid but he will never admit it. 
> 
> \- Cigarette vending machines went way out of fashion in the late 1990s but they weren't actually banned in the UK until 2011 and they still, as far as I can tell, do exist in licensed places in Ireland. Let's just assume that Gerry is a proper millennial and has never really had need to seek one out until now. 
> 
> \- More critical ABBA facts: Their album The Visitors was actually the first ever pop music CD mass produced. CDs weren't available commercially at all until August of 1982 so they're less than a year old as a concept to everyone in this story. Gerry doesn't have an opinion of ABBA or anything, but I do, so there you go.


	4. Wait a minute, doc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quite aesthetically humiliating.

A knock is what eventually wakes him up. In the scope of the options he'd come up with before passing out, it's pretty tame, but it still sends his heart rocketing to his throat. A brief scan of the room through sleep-sticky eyes seems to confirm that, yes, it's all the same as it was before he'd fallen asleep, which means that no, this likely isn't an Oz-type scenario. Also there are no monsters currently holding him prone or otherwise torturing him, so that's a win in the grand scheme of things.

Gerry stumbles to his feet and pads to the door to find none other than Michael standing in front of him. It's almost an exact mirror of the situation back at Gertrude's office, except Michael's swapped out a stack of manilla folders for a plain blue canvas tote bag. He still looks frazzle and slightly sheepish. He also, Gerry notes after some more thorough inspection, still looks very much human.

"Oh! Uh," Michael starts, taking a half step back as Gerry opens the door. "Ms. Robinson said, ah -- wait, so sorry, I'm Michael. Michael Shelley. I don't believe we've actually properly met." He adjusts his grip on the bag, shifting it to one side and extending a hand. Gerry tries to school his face into something that doesn't broadcast intense suspicion as he reaches out to shake it.

Michael's hand feels -- well, kind of bone-y, sure, but otherwise completely normal. Gerry's does not come back bloody or otherwise pierced. "Gerard. Uh, or Gerry, I guess. Keay."

"Keay? Any relation to Mary, then?" Michael asks, suddenly seeming a bit more chipper now that the awkwardness of required social niceties is out of the way. "Ms. Robinson said you were from out of town, but didn't say much else. No surprise there, really," he kind of laughs, more to himself, like it's a private joke Gerry ought to be in on, "so I didn't pry, but if you're visiting--"

For whatever reason, Gerry had completely failed to consider that his mother would be very much alive in 1983. The thought stops him dead for a moment, a mix of fresh dread and stomach churning anxiety washing over him in an abrupt and unforgiving wave. "No." He blurts, interrupting and perhaps a bit more harsh than he should be. Michael's face falls. "I mean, no, sorry, I don't know who that is. I'm from -- I'm a sort of freelancer, I guess?"

He really ought to have rehearsed a lie for this beforehand. Though, he supposes he can cut himself some slack for not having 'suddenly sent back in time' anywhere on his list of situations to have contingency stories for.

Michael tilts his head, but nods. "Oh, alright. Sorry to assume! It must be a more common last name than I'd realized, but you know what they say about assumptions," he laughs again, a sort of giggle that reminds Gerry a lot of the nerdier archetypes you'd find in old 80s movies. Michael's dweeby glasses and gawky limbs don't help the image, either. "But anyway, um. Ms. Robinson also said you'd had a bit of an emergency and lost your bags so she asked me to get you some clothes, and uh." He shifts the bag, offering it. "I didn't know your size. Ms. Robinson said to use my best judgement. So..."

His cheeks are turning pink.

Gerry takes the tote. Just a cursory glance at the bits of fabric he can see poking out of the top makes him think this is going to be a largely aesthetically humiliating experience but he's already feeling so glad to get out of these disgusting, slept-in clothes that he can't bring himself to care.

"Thank you."

Michael's smile is sweet and unselfconscious. "Of course! Well, I'll get out of your hair, then," he takes another step back from the door now that the bag has been successfully passed off. "And I'll be seeing you around, I suppose. Very nice meeting you, Gerard!"

When Gerry pours the tote's contents out onto the bunk, his suspicions are confirmed. There's a pair of sensible khaki trousers that at least look like they'll fit fine, if nothing else. There's also a pack of plain white undershirts, a pack of boxer briefs, a pack of white socks, a navy polo shirt, and a navy jumper. It's more color than Gerry's owned in his wardrobe possibly ever. After some consideration, he decides to pair the trousers with the polo and forgo the jumper even though he'll likely be chilly in the perpetual draftiness of the Archives. He tries very hard to not feel like an alien when he catches his reflection in the mirror on the back of the door. The trousers are a little big and the shirt is a little small but it really could be worse.

Probably. Whatever. On his list of things to worry about it's far from pressing.

His hair's still a mess, despite being freshly washed as of last night, so he does his best to rake his fingers through it to work some of the worst tangles out. His poor discarded clothes look like a sad, grass-stained and muddy heap on the far side of the bunk. Maybe he'll be able to find a laundromat somewhere, and while he's at it, buy something that feels a little less tragic to wear.

The whole look is really, in his opinion, topped off by his scuffed and filthy doc martens. At least no one he actually knows is here to see him like this. He can practically hear Tim's laugh in the back of his head at the very thought.

Gertrude is waiting for him in her office. The quick, incredulous once over she gives him before he sits down is enough to make him want to run back and put his dirty clothes right back on.

"I see Michael found you this morning," she starts, by way of any pleasantries.

"Yeah -- about that --"

She holds up a hand, stopping him before he completes the thought. "Your reaction yesterday did not go unnoticed. I can assure you I am looking into any possible records we may have of The Spiral manifesting doppelgangers or doubles of known people, but I can similarly assure you that Michael Shelley, while detrimental to this department in other ways, is the furthest thing from an Avatar or agent of _any_ entity, much less The Spiral."

Gerry watches her carefully as she gestures to a stack of files on the corner of her desk and continues. "Of course, that is not to say that I am naive enough to believe The Spiral cannot or does not play mind games, so I will not write the possibility off entirely and would appreciate it if you were to keep a close eye on him for any signs or signals that you may recognize that the rest of us may not."

It seems logical enough. Gertrude's reputation had always been, as far as Gerry could ascertain, deeply utilitarian, no nonsense, cold, even, but certainly not stupid or easily blindsided. Sasha and Tim would both joke about how they figured she'd out live the rest of them on sheer orneriness alone, look the Grim Reaper right in the eye and zero in on its weakness like it was nothing; make quick work of it. It was funnier to think about _before_ she died, of course.

Seeing at her now, in the flesh, Gerry can understand where they both came from. It feels like she's dissecting him as he sits there, without even moving a muscle.

"You want me to spy on your employee?" He asks, finally.

"For a given value of spying, yes. I'm merely asking for you to pay attention to the misgivings about him that you so obviously feel. Now," she sets her tape recorder down on the desk, and presses record, "if you wouldn't mind. Statement of Gerard Keay, regarding an encounter with The Spiral and apparent time travel. Statement taken direct from subject, 25th March, 1983. Statement begins."

Gerry doesn't miss the way she gave him no time to refuse, nor does he miss the way she made sure the recorder was _not_ running when she asked him to keep an eye on Michael.

He has to respect the pragmatism, really.

The version of events he gives in the official statement is honest, to a point. He leaves out Martin and any other names that could cause problems for people who aren't him. He skirts around an explanation of his own version of the Institute, doesn't mention Jon or the fact that he knows when Gertrude dies. When he gets to Michael, he tries to make things make as much sense as he can, but sense and something like Michael rarely go hand-in-hand.

After about twenty minutes or so, Gertrude turns the recorder off.

"I will be honest, I'm at something of a loss for how to proceed," she says evenly as she labels and stores the tape. "I will continue to look into The Spiral and any recorded instances of time travel that might exist in our documentation. I have several contacts who deal in cursed objects and artifacts that may also be of some assistance that I will reach out to in time. I assume I am correct in the belief that you would like to be sent back to your time, yes?"

Gerry nods. "Ideally, yeah. I've seen Back To The Future, I know how this sort of thing tends to mean for," he waves a hand, and then pauses, seeing Gertrude's eyebrow quirk up. Back To The Future is still two years off, he suddenly remembers. "Oh, see -- this is what I mean. Yes, I'd like to go home, that would be the best case scenario for me."

She nods and doesn't press the subject. She's very good at that, Gerry notes with some degree of interest. She doesn't ask questions when she doesn't need to, or when she knows the answer may be more trouble than it's worth. She volunteers no information she doesn't explicitly need to give.

"Understood. I will make sure you are left alone and given access to the Archives for the time being to conduct your own research, but please do keep Mr. Shelley in mind as you do." She pauses for a single beat, not long enough for Gerry to feel invited to respond. "I would also ask that, should you choose to leave the Institute's grounds, you do so accompanied by a staff member for the time being as I'm sure you can understand the liability you currently represent."

"You want me to have a chaperone?" Gerry tries not to scrunch his nose because, yes, he can understand the liability part, but the principal of the thing makes him bristle.

"If you'd choose to call it that. To be perfectly frank, Gerard, I'm not entirely sure _you_ are not an Avatar of The Spiral yourself, despite your rather odd choice of body modification for such an alignment, and I do not intend to make any careless mistakes."

He can't argue. "Okay, understood."

"Very well, then." Gertrude nods. A dismissal if Gerry's ever seen one.

* * *

The Archives don't look much different now than they did in Gerry's time, which is kind of depressing considering the effort Jon's put in to modernizing and reorganizing things. There are still files piled high in messy heaps, overflowing cabinets, tapes in boxes, and rows and rows of shelving units that, Gerry assumes, would play a nasty game of dominos if ever one were to be tipped into the next. The bullpen area does look different, though, if only for the typewriters and general lack of computers. There is one desk with a horrible, box-y thing with a tiny screen and an extremely square mouse occupying most of the space and a DOS operating system blinking green and black. No one's in front of it. Gerry assumes it must be for special purposes only.

There are only two people in the bullpen when Gerry arrives -- Michael Shelley, who is sitting pretzeled into a beat-up rolling chair at what Gerry assumes is his desk, a yellow highlighter crutched in one hand as he reads a typewritten document; and a woman Gerry doesn't recognize with olive skin and bird-like features with a messy, slightly greying bun on the back of her head. She notices him first.

"Oh! Hello there, love. You must be Gerard." She's up and taking one of Gerry's hands before Gerry really has time to say anything, "heard you just came in from abroad, we're so happy to have you! I'm Fiona, Fiona Law. You've met Michael?"

Gerry fumbles a little. "Yeah, we've met, it's nice to meet you too."

Fiona beams at him, squeezing his hand before dropping it. She feels like the sort of woman who volunteers at an animal shelter in her free time, or maybe grew up on a farm; caring and warm in a gentle way people from big cities rarely are. Genuine. Absently, Gerry wonders what could have possibly brought her to work here, but he knows if he asks he'll be in for a story that could very likely take up the next several hours so he decides to hold it back.

"Take any open desk you'd like, there's usually more of us but some are out today. No one'll mind. Well, Emma can be a bit of a pill but don't let her bother you, just go on, dear, make yourself comfortable." She waves to the empty desks in welcome. Gerry just picks the one nearest to him, one spot over from where Michael has turned his attention to him.

"Can I get you some tea, Gerard? I'm going to go fix myself -- you know what, I'll just bring some back for you." Fiona pats Gerry's shoulder on the way back, not waiting for an answer, and buzzes out of the room.

"Don't mind that one," Michael says the moment she's out of ear shot. "She means well. It's not an act or anything. She'll mother anything with a pulse." By the tone of his voice, Gerry can tell he's speaking from experience. "Oh, and sorry about the uh," he gestures to Gerry's outfit, lips quirking up like he's trying not to laugh. "I promise I didn't think about the fact your outfit was obviously solid black for a reason until after I used the company credit card."

It takes Gerry by surprise for a split second, the way that Michael's obviously teasing him -- it's a pretty far cry from the awkward man who floundered through his introduction in the hall this morning. Gerry realizes this must be him in his element -- his desk is cluttered with what can only be personal effects: a picture frame, a tiny plastic toy, a stress ball, a little glass tray of candy. He balanced his highlighter behind his ear when he turned to Gerry, the motion so fluid that it had to be a reflex. He clearly spends a lot of time here.

"What, are you saying I'm not pulling off the business casual look?" Gerry snipes back, half laughing, which makes Michael snort.

"No, no, of course not. You look quite, uh, dashing." The air quotations around 'dashing' are so heavily implied Gerry has to laugh in earnest.

Michael almost instantly cracks up. His laugh is a nasally, odd little thing that makes Gerry remember the _other_ Michael -- but not because they sound the same. The opposite, really. It's all so incongruous. Watching him here and now, Gerry can't imagine this guy ever looking threatening. Though, he's quick to remind himself, if any entity out there is good at playing this particular brand of bait-and-switch game, it would be The Spiral.

"If you'd like, I can show you around our little corner of the city some time, point you to some shops that might be more to your liking." Michael finally adds, "Oh, ah -- Ms. Robinson never said where you were from, sorry to be rude and assume you're not a local, I just --"

"Oh, no," Gerry quickly interjects, "not rude. I'm not from around here, no, but I'm familiar. It's...been a while, though, so a tour could do me some good. Thanks."

At least it seems like Gertrude's request to keep an eye on Michael will be easy. And it'll be nice to see how he behaves outside of the Institute's walls. Maybe Gerry will get lucky and find him peeling off his human costume or something -- wouldn't that make things easier? Blow this whole case wide open.

Yeah, right.

Michael beams. "Great, I'll catch up with you once we're done for the day. I imagine you'd like to get out of this place -- I can't imagine staying here overnight. Don't tell Ms. Robinson but it kind of gives me the creeps sometimes." He turns back to his stack of files and pucks the highlighter from his ear. "Let me know if you need anything else though, happy to help!"

Gerry is spared the inconvenience of having to make up a lie about why and how he already knows where everything in the Archives is kept by the return of Fiona, who's holding not two but three steaming cups of tea between her hands. She places one on Gerry's, then Michael's with a casual "there you are, loves" before returning to her own.

In a weird way, she reminds Gerry of Martin -- not that Martin is quite as quick to want to tend to people or as unrepentantly maternal as Fiona seems to be, but there's a similar energy there. He wonders if that's just one of those weird archetypes that places like this tend to cultivate, so much death and destruction and general spookiness just naturally finding a way to balance itself out anyway it can.

And he does appreciate the tea.

It's harder to navigate the Archives without a working computer system -- not that they were ever state-of-the-art in Gerry's time but being able to at least get a start on things by referencing some of the available databases was an advantage. Luckily, given the entire Institute's penchant for randomly making digital electronics go haywire, he'd gotten plenty familiar with the filing card systems and rolodexes, so he's not completely lost as he starts to prowl around for information on time travel and The Spiral.

Michael had offered to help but Gerry waved him off in favor of taking a rather slower-than-necessary perusal of the shelf nearest to his desk, just to surreptitiously get a closer look at whatever Michael was working on as well. Based strictly on the handful of highlighted words and phrases Gerry could pick out without being noticed, it actually looked like Michael was digging into The Spiral as well, which added a certain layer of unexpected complication onto everything.

On one hand, this was good. It was an easy way to start a conversation that could potentially help Gerry on his own little mission here -- but on the other, it was odd. Almost too on the nose. It made something in the back of Gerry's head perk up and pay attention. Coincidences, his mother used to tell him, were only coincidences to fools.

Still, there's nothing to be done about it now, so Gerry continued on to settle in with the handful of files he was able to pull along with a small stack of statement tapes that had no apparent transcriptions attached. A little annoying but completely unsurprising.

The only remotely interesting thing he's able to find is a set of statements about a man who was, apparently, visited in some way by his son by way of a very Spiral-like door that seemed to connect them, certainly across a distance, and potentially across time. It was difficult to really pin down, but still, it was interesting -- or at least better than nothing. If The Spiral could, in fact, link people together for whatever reason, maybe that could relate to the way Michael had been talking about Gertrude in his...fit. Or whatever that was.

He had neglected to bring that part up in his own statement. It felt too dangerous to the timeline to even insinuate that Michael had at least known of Gertrude in some capacity, like a butterfly effect trigger just waiting to happen.

Christ, wouldn't that be a kick in the teeth? Figuring this mess out and getting home only to find that he'd somehow, you know, changed the course of history in some dramatic and irreversible way; caused an alien invasion or something. No, thank you.

He marked down the statement numbers in a notebook and xeroxed the ad hoc transcriptions he'd typed out on his own to fold up and keep within the cover pocket. No one seemed to even notice or question him for it -- apparently Archive security was a lot more lax these days than in Gerry's own time.

Eventually, and before Gerry actually realizes it, it's 7PM. He hadn't looked at a clock the entire day, and for a split second, he feels very disoriented when Fiona stands up and dusts herself off. "Alright, boys, I suppose it's about that time, isn't it?" She announces, "I'll see you both in the early morning. Lovely to meet you again, dear, happy to have you!"

She pats Gerry's shoulder as she walks out of the room.

Michael unspools himself from his chair, stretching his arms above his head as he stands, yawning. He really is quite tall, Gerry notes, though it's strangely hard to notice. In their limited interactions, he's noticed that Michael tends to hunch a little, make himself smaller, and the fact that he's so gangly makes it feel like he's not taking up too much space. But really, with perfect posture, Gerry wouldn't be surprised to learn he has at least eight or nine centimeters on Gerry's own respectable 185.

"Right then," he says, cheerfully. "Not much more getting done today, I'd say. How about we go find you some less awkward trousers?"

"Lead the way."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The statements referenced here are [A Sturdy Lock](https://the-magnus-archives.fandom.com/wiki/MAG_27:_A_Sturdy_Lock) and [Threshold](https://the-magnus-archives.fandom.com/wiki/MAG_146:_Threshold) which I will be shamelessly shaking down for loose pieces and shaping into my own continuity for this fic. 
> 
> \- Back to the Future came out on July 3, 1985. 
> 
> \- Here's what [personal computers looked like](https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/1983/) in 1983. 
> 
> \- Fiona Law and Emma are both names I'm using from canon and there will be more of them, but I'm not especially concerned with adapting what we have of them in actual canon so it's probably better to just assume they are different characters in this story if that sort of thing is gonna bug you! 
> 
> \- I feel like I should have an ABBA fact here just for the sake of consistency, so the group actually dissolved and held their final performance in December of 1982 so, for world building flavor, assume that every character who isn't Gerry in this story is working through their grief over this event.


	5. All we ever wanted was everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shopping trip.

As far as covert pseudo-spying missions on people who may or may not be lethal, supernatural, nightmare monsters are concerned, spending time with Michael Shelley is maybe the easiest one Gerry's ever been on. 

They leave the Institute and head for the tube station in companionable silence. Apparently Michael lives in Stockwell, he explains casually as they head through the turnstiles, so that's the general area they'll be headed if Gerry doesn't mind. 

He doesn't.

It feels odd to sit in a train without earbuds in and music playing. He must have done it hundreds of times as a kid, but now, on top of everything else, it makes him feel strangely naked. A handful of people he notices have bulky over-ear headphones connected to clunky Walkman tape decks clipped to their belts but the majority of the commuters are either reading or chatting quietly. He hadn't been in the right mind to pay close attention when he'd made his way to the Institute from the airport, half dead as he was, but now that he is the sense of surrealism is almost overwhelming. It even smells different.

"I've lived in this flat for a few years now," Michael explains as the train pulls out of the station. It's crowded, so they stand, swaying with the forward momentum. "Got it right when I got the job at the Institute, which was when I graduated -- I guess it's been almost six years now." 

Gerry does some of the math in his head and tries not to feel even more deeply weirded out by the fact 'six years ago' in this context means some time in the late '70s. Michael must be, what, late 20s? Early 30s like Gerry himself? It's disquieting to think about. Instead of pressing the subject, he angles for an easy out. "What'd you study?"

"Library sciences, if you can believe, kind of the standard ticket for most of us" Michael laughs, then reaches up to adjust his glasses theatrically. "It might surprise you to learn that I've always been a bit of a nerd." He almost manages to keep a straight face, even as Gerry bursts out laughing. 

"It's respectable, I'd say. Clearly it got you a job and one it seems like you enjoy?" 

"I do, yeah." Michael confirms, still grinning, "I've always been interested in the sort of work The Magnus Institute was known for, even as a kid, so I got really lucky when they hired me." 

The train curves, jostling them both on their feet. Gerry earns himself a glare from a beleaguered looking business man for taking too far a step back. He glares right back, but the man seems less than intimidated, which is the exact moment that Gerry remembers he's dressed like a private school child after a dramatic growth spurt. 

Michael coughs to try and cover the fact that he's laughing -- he must have noticed. Gerry glares at him, too. 

"Sorry, sorry," he waves his free hand. "It's my fault, I know. I can't help it, I'm not exactly the sort of guy who'd get into The Batcave now am I? We'll fix it, I know a shop you'll probably like. Or at least I can hazard a guess. I've never been inside." He sweeps his hand toward himself, gesturing up and down, "this is my standard uniform, I'm afraid."

He's wearing an earth-toned jumper over a collared shirt and sensible trousers, the type of outfit you wear when you're not looking to be noticed. Paired with his glasses and curly hair that, if pushed forward, Gerry assumes could easily hide his face, Michael is the sort of person who could very easily fade into a crowd by design. 

"I should know better than to trust your judgement," Gerry jokes as the train pulls out of the final station before their stop, "but I don't have much choice now do I?"

Michael's easy laughter and easier banter carries them out of the tube station and onto the street.

The shop he'd picked out, as it turned out, was definitely up Gerry's alley. A sort of alternative store that sold both records and clothes for prices that made Gerry's eyes threaten to pop out of his head. Stuff like this would go for a hundred quid in a vintage shop back home, easily, but here it was tossed around like nothing. He picks himself up a couple pairs of dark jeans and a small assortment of shirts -- a black and white Siouxsie and the Banshees tee particularly tickles him. Then, in a fit of self indulgent borderline-mania, he grabs an ankh pendant necklace and tosses it on the pile as he checks out. It's very silly, but it feels...appropriate, somehow. It's not like he was about to start backcombing and aquanet-ing his hair into a huge tangled mess, but he can let himself have this, right? It's all in the name of blending in. 

The very bored looking girl at the register doesn't question him when he asks to change in their fitting room and wear some of his selections out, thank god. Maybe she's used to it -- it certainly feels like that sort of place. 

All the while, Michael hovers politely, sticking out like a sore thumb as he absently flips through stacks of records. Gerry's surprised to see him actually buying one when he comes out in his new outfit. He recognizes the cover as the employee slides it into a brown paper bag -- Bauhaus's The Sky's Gone Out. 

"Huh. Didn't imagine that was your style," Gerry says as he rounds the corner, prompting Michael to look up and blink. His cheeks turn a little pink, visible even in the low light of the shop. 

"I contain multitudes, I guess," Michael smiles, shrugging one shoulder as they turn to leave. "You look…" Gerry watches him search for a word, "more comfortable." 

"Is that a step down from 'dashing?'" He definitely _feels_ more comfortable at least. Michael laughs. 

"Of course not. I'd say that you probably contain multitudes as well." 

Michael doesn't know the half of it. 

So far Gerry's gone this entire evening without -- at least, as far as he can tell -- giving Michael the idea to write The Goonies or something and changing the course of history, so he's counting it as a major win. He's also, unfortunately, found absolutely no genuine reason to suspect Michael is anything more than what he seems to be, which is to say....well, kind of a dork, really. Gerry has spent basically the entire night dangling himself out in the open as bait for any potential Spiral-planted bear traps to snap closed around him and nothing has. 

Ultimately this is probably a good thing. Gerry isn't exactly keen on a horrible death any time soon and, really, he has to admit that Michael is actually kind of fun to be around. He doesn't want to be stuck in the early '80s for the rest of his life for anything, but he definitely feels better about the temporary prospect than he did yesterday. 

The down side to all of this is the fact that he's no closer to any answers. At least if Michael had suddenly revealed himself to be a monster, things would have started slotting into place, but as it stands now, Gerry only has more questions than he did when he first woke up. Why is he here? Why now? Why does this man who _isn't_ a monster share a face and a name with one? How is he supposed to get home? 

Michael clears his throat and Gerry snaps out of his own head to realize they've meandered away from the shop back towards the station.

"I know you've probably got plenty of work to do -- and you're probably still quite tired, but would you maybe want to grab a pint before you head back?" He's turning pink again as he asks, eyes focused on the empty air over Gerry's shoulder. It's abundantly clear he doesn't ask this sort of question very often. 

It actually makes Gerry feel a little flattered, because truth be told, he doesn't get _asked_ this sort of question very often, either. 

Fuck it. "Sure, why not." 

Michael's entire face lights up. 

They don't have to walk far from the station to find a pub that seems the right amount of crowded. Gerry doesn't need to ask if Michael has a regular spot -- it's abundantly clear he doesn't. That's fine. It's not like Gerry ever did either back home, just the spot that Tim had semi-arbitrarily picked for them as an after-work meet up place. Gerry mostly tried to avoid those gatherings when he could, anyway. It wasn't that he didn't like his coworkers, they were his friends, but he preferred to keep his social experiences limited to small groups. Both Tim and Sasha tended to be the opposite, and, well -- if Jon and Martin both got drug along, they were usually too busy doing whatever it was they did. Orbiting around each other like moons, halfway between endearing and painful to watch. 

The group dynamic always left Gerry as something of the odd man out, was all. It was nobody's fault and he didn't mind, really, but it meant his pub outings were few and far between. 

This is nice, though. They find a spot in the far corner, near the door and it's busy enough to have a decent atmosphere but not busy enough to make Gerry feel claustrophobic. The beer is refreshing. Michael is the furthest thing from overbearing or extroverted but Gerry doesn't feel that knee-jerk panic that he usually gets interacting with new people when the conversation starts to lull. 

"So, why The Magnus Institute?" He eventually prompts, after Michael's finished explaining that his landlady would, in fact, allow him to get a cat if he wanted, but he can't because he's allergic. 

"Oh, you know. Weird childhood interest in freaky stuff, the usual." Michael waves a hand in a dismissive way that makes Gerry think there's definitely more to the story, but he doesn't press. "And what about you? I didn't know the Institute hired freelancers, or at least not the Archives. I guess I can confess to not knowing much about the rest of the departments or how they work." 

Gerry buys himself some time by taking what he hopes isn't an unnaturally long sip of his beer. "It's -- I'm kind of a special circumstance, I think. My, uh, family has off and on worked with Gertrude for years." It's not, technically, a lie, but it's also very much not the truth. "I move around a lot."

Michael nods slowly. Gerry hopes his caginess isn't coming off as rudeness. It probably is. 

"So what brings you here now?"

"I'm doing some work on a case involving The Spiral." May as well just come right out with it, Gerry figures. It's one thing he doesn't have to lie quite as opaquely about. 

"Ah, Ms. Robinson has me pulling information on that one now, too. Must be something in the water." Michael takes a sip of his own drink, "I'll be honest, of all fourteen, I think it's the one I'm the most afraid of. Probably shouldn't admit that out loud but it's true." 

Gerry raises an eyebrow. "Really? What about it?"

"Oh, everything." Michael laughs, quiet under his breath -- he laughs a lot, and very easily, Gerry has noticed. Smiles easily, too. It's cute, really. "Who isn't at least a little scared of their mind playing tricks on them, you know? Things I can see and touch, dolls or bugs or even things I can sort of control, like darkness and heights, those I can understand. Still very scary, of course, but they don't make me feel quite as helpless." 

"Hm." Gerry had never really thought of it like that before. "I suppose that makes sense. The human mind is just a scary place in general, I suppose. I've always been most afraid of The End."

Michael gives him an incredulous look.

"What!" Gerry immediately defends, half laughing. "It's true!"

"You can't pick The End! That's the most obvious one."

Gerry laughs in earnest, resting his elbows on the table. "That's not fair. It's one of the fourteen and it's the one I'm most afraid of. You shared yours and I'm sharing mine!" Keeping the levity in this moment is crucial, Gerry realizes, because there's absolutely no way he can earnestly explain his own fucked-up relationship with Death without at least alluding to his mom and that was a no-go for too many reasons to count. 

Michael rolls his eyes. "Fine, fine. Just know that I think your choice is low hanging fruit." 

"That's fair, you are certainly allowed." Gerry finishes the last of his beer and almost instinctively reaches to his pocket for his phone. His phone that he does not have and will not exist for another thirty-some years. He does not have a watch and has absolutely no idea what time it is. 

A cursory glance around the pub helps him spot a clunky branded thing sitting behind the bar. It's pushing 9:30. 

Michael notices too. "Oh, dear. It's so late. I'm sorry --" he downs the rest of his glass in one gulp, "I know you must be tired. I'll get out of your hair. You know the way back, yes?" 

"I'll manage, thanks. And it's no trouble. It was nice to do something normal." Gerry talks as he starts to fish his wallet out to leave a tip before Michael shoo's his hand away and pulls out his own. 

"Let me. You can get the next one." He tries to make it sound casual, but Gerry can hear the question mark hanging in the empty space. 

Gerry hopes the smile he gives is reassuring. "Sounds good." 

When Gerry finally goes to bed that evening in the mostly empty Institute, he tries to think about all the ways he should be absolutely terrified of Michael, especially now that he's been well and truly lulled into such a sense of security. But mostly, all he really succeeds in doing is thinking about all the ways he's not terrified at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- [The Batcave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batcave_\(club\)) was a club in London that opened in 1982 and is considered one of the major birthplaces of goth subculture! Michael's obviously never been, but knows the vibe because he's a curious boy. 
> 
> \- Bauhaus's [The Sky's Gone Out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sILbx5xbwPY&list=PLnif9Rfb5Adlncer5j9JUqlBkJF0TjKte) was also released in 1982. It rips _and_ the title just feels very TMA appropriate. Michael doesn't own a CD player yet, but has record player at home and a walkman for tapes. 
> 
> \- The Goonies was released in 1985. Gerry keeps defaulting to things released that year for two reasons -- one, in this fic's timeline it's his birth year so it's one he remembers really easily whenever trivia about it crops up and two, a SHOCKING amount of pop cultural touchstones genuinely came out. Like, jesus christ, 1985 calm down. 
> 
> \- Also, as a few people have correctly guessed: Yes! Eric is around, he just hasn't shown up yet. Mary is, too. Don't worry, they're coming and it's going to be awkward. 
> 
> \- Also also, I feel like I just keep making these boys flirt super hard which is cute and fun and I love writing it but I don't want to mislead anyone into thinking this is a romcom. It's gonna get better before it gets worse but it's definitely going to get worse as things progress. I'll keep the tags updated though!


	6. Man on the moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected meeting

Over the next several days, Gerry reluctantly develops a sort of routine. It goes like this: wake up, steal some semblance of breakfast from the break room, avoid anyone who isn't Michael or Fiona (this step isn't hard, they're still the only two people in the Archives aside from Gertrude who Gerry _hasn't_ been avoiding but still hasn't really seen), and tuck in to research. 

The researching part is the worst and most tedious of the bunch because he has, unsurprisingly, made absolutely no progress. Michael's been helping him track down statements and passing off his own research when he can but it all still feels like a great deal of nothing important. The general consensus is that The Spiral is weird, unpredictable, and deeply insidious, which he already knew. 

And speaking of Michael -- Gerry is very hesitant to admit it but it sort of feels like they've become friends. He has not yet done anything to make Gerry suspicious and, really, seems kind of thrilled that Gerry's even around -- not in a devious way or anything, either, in that bubbly sort of new friend way that makes you excited to have little inside jokes. Michael'd said he was most afraid of The Spiral but Gerry gets the sense that he must be a very lonely guy, too -- it's been a week but Gerry has yet to hear him mention any friends outside the Institute. This may not actually mean anything, of course, but it doesn't feel like a secret Michael is trying very hard to keep. 

Gerry does know the feeling, though. Back home, he'd be hard pressed to find a single person outside of his coworkers that he'd actually identify as a friend. That sort of chosen isolation came hand in hand with the gig, really. It was tricky to find anyone with the sort of shared life experience to build a common ground -- which was admittedly great for the population at large but not great if you were looking to go out and do something on the weekend with a person you didn't already spend most of your time with already. 

Gerry supposes that Tim and Sasha and Jon and Martin are lucky in that way, to have found each other in spite of -- or really because of -- it all. To have that for one another. 

Not that he and Michael are anywhere near that right now, or anything. Of course not. It's been just a handful of days and Gerry's still running predominantly on anxiety and stress so it's just nice to have someone help him out and make him laugh. 

Also, lest he forget, that someone still has the chance of secretly being a monster. So. There was that, too. 

It's on the fifth day that things start to get complicated. 

There's someone Gerry doesn't recognize occupying the desk adjacent to the one Gerry had unofficially claimed as his own, a stern looking woman who could probably give Gertrude a run for her money in exuding an unimpressed aura. She barely gives Gerry a second glance as he enters the room. Emma, he assumes, recalling a name that Fiona had mentioned earlier, who could be 'a bit of a pill.' 

Gerry doesn't take it personally, even when Fiona turns from her desk and sighs, theatrically. "For goodness' sakes -- Emma, this is Gerry, Gerry, Emma Harvey. She and Eric have been off in Italy dealing with some nasty business, isn't that right Emma?" 

It probably isn't possible for Emma's lips to press into a thinner line, but Gerry swears that they do. 

"Quite." She says, with the tone of someone who was just interrupted in the middle of something important. She casts a look over her shoulder at Gerry, meeting his eye for the first time and looking -- well, still very much unimpressed. No real surprises there, Gerry supposes. "Good to meet you." 

"Likewi--" 

The door behind Gerry opens and Fiona cuts him off with an enthusiastic clap, clutching her hands together at her chest. "Oh! Eric, love, welcome home, welcome home!" 

Even before Gerry turns around entirely, he feels his stomach dropping. 

The newcomer is a tall man with thick eyebrows and an angular face. His dishwater hair is cropped close and straight, not exactly neat but not messy either. Bizarrely, the color is the first thing Gerry actually notices, as his vision starts to get an odd sort of vignetting effect around the edges. It's the color that exists on his own head, under the black dye. The too-light flash that shows up at his roots after a couple weeks. 

Fuck.

 _Fuck._

Fiona buzzes over to Eric and ushers him into the room. "We've earned ourselves a visitor while you were away. Eric, Gerry; Gerry, Eric." 

Eric grins. It's crooked at the side and that odd, bizarre mix of familiar and unfamiliar that makes Gerry feel dizzy. He extends a hand. "Nice to meet you, then. Eric Delano." 

For a moment, Gerry can only stare at him. Eric's eyebrows start to knit together. "Are you alrig--"

"Sorry!" Gerry snaps to attention, swallowing as not to choke. "Sorry, a little sleep deprived today." He shakes his hand as firmly as he can, "nice to meet you, Eric."

Thankfully, Fiona swoops in yet again, saving Gerry the continued humiliation of his own state of shock, ushering Eric away as she says: "Now, you'll have to tell us all about Italy. It all went well, I assume? You're both obviously in one piece, thank heavens." 

Gerry remains standing for what he hopes isn't an obviously strange amount of time, watching Eric take his seat, before collapsing into his own chair. To his left, he can feel Michael's eyes on him, concerned -- suspicious, maybe? Hopefully not. 

Somehow, Gerry hadn't -- it was just like Michael inadvertently name dropping his mother. He'd just never even considered the fact that his father would still be alive here. He hadn't given himself a chance to prepare. It wasn't like his dad's time as an Archival Assistant was a secret or anything -- he may have never really known his father but he knew _of_ him, as like, a concept. And his mother did talk about him sometimes, after his death -- not much and not often, to be fair, and rarely positively, but as a child Gerry had hung onto those words for dear life. 

He should have seen this coming. It was stupid, really. Completely irresponsible. He was going to be born in two years. Of course this was going to happen. How could it _not_ happen? Stupid. _Stupid._ He let himself comfortable and complacent even though he knew better and now --

"Everything alright?" Michael's voice is low and concerned. Gerry tries not to startle. Eric and Fiona are chattering pleasantly back and forth in Emma's general vicinity. She looks less than thrilled, but is chiming in every few moments to correct Eric on some detail or another. Something about The Flesh, Gerry picks up. A church. Rotten mean. The usual. 

"Yeah, uh." Staring at them is doing nothing to make Gerry feel less out of his mind so he finally drags his attention away, offering Michael an apologetic smile. "Just tired, I think. Doing wonders for my social skills." 

"I can imagine." Michael nods once to Gerry, then tilts his head to the trio on the other end of the bullpen. "Eric's a very nice man. Been here almost as long as Fiona has. Just don't get him talking about his fiance, Mary who is -- Oh, I mentioned her to you before, didn't I? She's not exactly the most comfortable woman in the world to be around, let's leave it at that." Michael tries to laugh a little, lighten the mood, but it comes out a little feebly. Gerry's stomach twists, painfully. He hopes it doesn't show on his face. "Emma is -- well, she's fine if you're not in her way. And she does warm up eventually. Sort of." 

Gerry wants to ask. He wants to press for a million details. Instead, he swallows around the frog in his throat and tries to relax his shoulders. "Guess I'll try and stay out of her way, then." 

"You know," a beat, Michael's eyes skirting from the group on the other side of the bullpen and back to Gerry, "I was thinking…" He trails off. Gerry can see where his cheeks are heating up. The cheap fluorescent lights make the pink blush look ruddy and slightly orange. 

"Yeah?"

He regroups. "I was thinking that, if you wanted -- look, I know the Archives aren't exactly the most restful place in the world and it's clearly taking a toll on you so. My flat has a spare bedroom that I've, quite frankly, been using as a really luxurious closet and, well. If you, you know, wanted to -- I'd be happy to…"

The orange on his cheeks has spread to his ears and all the way up to his hairline. Gerry would probably laugh if he weren't afraid it might make him literally combust. 

And really, on top of being a very kind offer, it's probably the best possible misread of Gerry's current discomfort possible -- and a not entirely inaccurate one, at that. Sleeping in the safe room was mostly fine, and Gerry was grateful for it, but it all did feel very claustrophobic most of the time. With the exception of his occasional trips out with Michael (they'd revisited the pub from that first day two more times so far, and it was becoming a bit of a habit) he never left the building. 

He could definitely keep it going if he had to, he'd suffered through worse, but he did have some escalating concerns about the other people in the Institute starting to question him. Fiona wasn't intentionally nosy or anything, but she did have that sort of busybody energy that prompted her to keep making small talk and asking questions, most of which Gerry was rapidly running out of lies for, and now with two more employees in the mix -- one of which Gerry needed to stay as far away from as possible without calling attention to the fact he was staying as far away as possible -- there were a lot of variables in play here. 

"Please don't feel like you have to --" Michael holds up both his hands, "I'm certainly not trying to be presump --"

"No, no," Gerry quickly cuts in, "sorry, I'm -- I appreciate it, Michael, really, I don't want to impose but --"

"Oh, no imposition at all!" 

And maybe it's because he really _is_ quite tired, or maybe it's the way Michael's face splits into a hopeful smile at the thought, but Gerry just can't be bothered to continue the cycle of polite denials that seem to come with offers like this. Or maybe it’s because every instinct Gerry has is telling him to run away from his future father if only to save himself the humiliation of it all, and the temptation to say something he might regret, possible timeline destruction notwithstanding. "Well, then, I'd love too." 

Gertrude will probably be thrilled, at least. If ever Gerry's going to catch Michael being inhuman, it would probably be in his own home, right? 

Even thinking about it makes Gerry feel slightly ridiculous.

There's nothing supernatural going on with Michael Shelley. Gerry would put money on it. And he doesn't have a lot of money to spare, so consider him quite confident. 

"Great!" Michael's entire body relaxes in one all-encompassing motion, like every one of his limbs had somehow exhaled like lungs. "Great. I sort off -- well, it's already all cleaned out and everything, so. Whenever you're ready."

It wasn't as though Gerry had much in the way of things to pack up -- but there was the matter of actually talking with Gertrude before he up and vanished from her surveillance. He hoped this last week proved that he was at least mostly what he said he was, and not a complete nut job from off the street, but he very much doubted he would have assuaged all her suspicions. He probably never would. 

It does ping him as odd that he's seen so little of her, though. It wasn't completely atypical for an Archivist to become elusive for a while, Jon certainly knew how to make himself scarce for whatever spooky reasons when he needed to, but he usually stuck around if something mysterious was happening in the Institute proper. 

Thankfully, he does find her in her office that evening when he comes knocking. She's reading what looks like a very thick binder's worth of papers, marking notations with a red pen in the margins. If the context were any different, she might evoke the spirit of a very strict university professor grading a student's work. 

"You are planning to leave the safe room and stay with Michael, yes?"

Of course she already knows. 

Still, Gerry finds himself just a little off balance as he closes the door behind him. "Yes. He invited me --"

"I assumed he would. He asked about you yesterday, wanted to know if you had anywhere else to go." She does look up at that, levels him with an unreadable stare. "He's become quite fond of you." 

It feels like an accusation, even though it doesn't sound like one. 

"You're the one who told me to keep an eye on him." Gerry defends.

"I did, yes. I am not questioning your methods, Gerard, merely emphasizing the need to remain objective in this scenario." She flips the cover of the binder closed and sets her pen down. "It is, after all, in your best interest." 

"I'm aware." He tries not to snap and mostly succeeds. "And what about those interests? Have you found anything because as far as I can tell, despite a completely bizarre and unfathomable set of coincidences in name and approximate appearance, I think Michael Shelley is just a normal human being, so I'm kind of at a loss here." 

Gertrude actually does heave a sigh at that, though it sounds more put-upon at Gerry's tone than anything else. "There has been some unusual Spiral activity as of late that I am currently looking into. I've also reached out to several of my contacts and am still waiting for meaningful responses." 

Right. Email and text messages are still a ways off. 

Still, it's a lot of words to say that she has also come up empty handed so far -- though something about the way she so offhandedly says 'some unusual Spiral activity' makes Gerry feel like he's being deliberately told half truths here.

Maybe he hasn't proven himself as trustworthy as he'd hoped. He heaves a sigh out through his nose, and tamps down on the unwanted frustration. He's worked with Jon long enough to understand that being the Archivist sometimes came with an infuriating amount of evasive bullshit -- but he could usually call Jon out on it without endangering his only real chance of returning to his own time, so. Therein lies the difference, he guesses. He'd rather not push any of Gertrude's buttons by getting too nosy. 

Really, it's probably a defense mechanism left over from his mom more than it is anything in his professional life, but that's not a can of worms he's eager to kick over any time soon. 

"Alright. Well. Keep me posted. And you'll know where to find me on off hours from here on out, I guess." 

"Indeed. Please return the key before you leave, we try not to distribute multiple copies." 

Michael was waiting for him when he left Gertrude's office, doing what Gerry assumed was his best attempt at schooling his face into something that was nonplussed rather than excited. It wasn't very convincing. It actually made Gerry feel a bit better, considering what a mess his day had been. 

"All set?"

He was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First! I was bummed to not keep my streak of daily updates going yesterday! Had some life problems that are still persisting so, unfortunately, the weekly schedule here might be more realistic for a bit. I'm trying to stay about 2 completed chapters a head of myself in posting for my own editorial pipeline and I'm maintaining that process but I haven't been able to write much in the last few days so it's frustratingly slowing down. 
> 
> Second! Not a lot of fun historical details for you this time around but I will say:
> 
> \- Yes I have mostly fleshed out (get it) the Flesh incident that Eric and Emma were intervening in in my head and it's completely unimportant to this story but it involved skinless corpses a la Frank from Hellraiser. Delicious. 
> 
> \- You've probably noticed by now that everyone in the Archives, past and present, are well aware of the fears! This will be lightly addressed in the story moving forward so I won't spoil too much but I will say it's less of a critical plot thing and more a thing in canon that always felt like a weird little hangnail for me so I decided to shave it off with my AU powers. The plot-specific stuff will be address though, I promise! 
> 
> \- This title is from Harry Chapin's 1977 ballad about absentee fathers, [Cat's In The Cradle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUNZMiYo_4s), namely because I'm hilarious but also because it fucking rips. 
> 
> \- Don't worry, I'm sure absolutely nothing awkward or precarious will happen now that Gerry and Michael are shacking up and Gerry's flight response to seeing Eric will have absolutely no negative repercussions and won't come back to bite him in the ass. It's all going to be completely fine.


	7. In the air that night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Culinary arts.

The inside of Michael's flat was...well, exactly what Gerry had assumed it would be, to a point. Part of him couldn't get over the idea that Michael was able to afford a place this spacious on an Institute wage. Inflation really as a bitch.

It was a second story walk-up with two bedrooms and a relatively spacious kitchen, decorated what Gerry could very, very generously call "sparsely." You could definitely tell that a person lived here, and picked up after themselves, but there wasn't much else in terms of real identity save for a couple of framed posters of art pieces Gerry didn't immediately recognize and some dog-eared books scattered across some of the flat surfaces. The couch had what looked like a handmade crocheted throw blanket half thrown over the back and the clunky CRT television looked like a piece of furniture in and of itself with wood panels on all sides.

The only immediately noticeable photos were framed on the wall near the hallway. One looked like Michael with both Fiona and Eric, sitting outside the Institute, the other was an incongruous orange tabby cat staring blankly into the camera.

Gerry nodded to it. "Thought you were allergic to cats."

Michael locked the door behind them and dropped his keys onto the small coffee table off to the left. "Oh, I am. It's Fiona's. His name is Meatball and she's very, very proud of him, if you can believe. She gave us all photos of him in Christmas cards a few years back, and I thought it would be, I don't know, kind of funny to frame it." He shrugs a little sheepishly as he kicks off his shoes. "I don't know if it is or not, but I've grown kind of fond of it regardless."

"Meatball, huh?" Gerry can't help but smile. He could have pegged Fiona as a cat lady from a mile away.

"I think he's got a more formal name, with a 'Sir' in it somewhere, but I can't remember what it is. Don't tell Fiona, she'd be heartbroken." As he speaks, Michael drops the tote of files he'd carted home from the Archives on the small kitchen table and nods down the hall. "Spare room is the door on the left, second door on the left is the washroom, door at the end of the hall is the master bedroom. Sorry it's not much but --"

"No, no, I appreciate it, really." Gerry has exactly one bag of clothes to his name and has been sleeping on the world's most uncomfortable cot for nearly a week. He's not about to complain -- also, this place is astronomically nicer than his little shoebox of a flat back home, but he can't exactly explain that to Michael. "You didn't have to invite me in like this."

"Nonsense," Michael waves a hand dismissively as he moves past Gerry and opens the spare room door. "Please, make yourself at home."

Unless you count a brief stint being stuck with the ghost of his mother -- which Gerry most certainly fucking does not -- he's never actually had or been a roommate before. This only dawns on him as he finally tosses his bag down onto the mattress. The bed's been made, sensible grey sheets with a nice cozy duvet and another crocheted throw blanket. There's a dresser that looks older than both Michael and Gerry combined and a small closet, a nightstand with a simple lamp, and a chair that looks like it probably came from a second-hand shop after someone's grandma passed away. Gerry hopes Michael didn't buy it exclusively for this room, but has the sneaking suspicion he may have. The floral pattern of the fabric goes with absolutely nothing else he's seen in the flat.

There are no photos on the walls in here. Gerry assumes there will probably only be one or two in Michael's bedroom, if any. He's never, Gerry realizes, actually spoken about his own family before -- not that Gerry's asked. If anything, he had actively tried to avoid the topic for the security of his own lies and cover stories. But something about the flat confirmed a lot of what he sort of already knew, or at least assumed on an unconscious level. There was no way Michael was the sort of person with much in the way of a family.

That was another tried and true Institute employee trope, now that Gerry really thought about it. Orphans and outcasts, the lot of them. He'd always assumed that it was just the default personality type needed to get into the sort of spooky shit they dealt with on the regular, but maybe there was more to it than that.

When Gerry wanders back out of the room, Michael is in the kitchen, organizing an assortment of ingredients. He looks up and immediately turns pink -- actually pink, this time. The lighting in here is much better. "Oh! So, uh -- I'm not, y'know, a great cook or anything but I can follow instructions pretty well, despite what Ms. Robinson might tell you." He laughs, self deprecating as he sweeps a hand around the counter, "So I figured I'd put together lasagna, and you're absolutely welcome to it, if you'd like."

The whole display is...it's adorable really. Honestly, at this point, if Michael did peel his skin off and reveal himself to be some unfathomable beast, Gerry thinks it may well be worth it. He's never seen a person look this sheepish about cooking pasta before, or this hopeful. He's not even a lasagna fan, but he'll happily eat whatever Michael puts together if only to keep from disappointing him.

Though, there _is_ something that's a bit strange, Gerry suddenly realizes. "Why do you do that? Call Gertrude 'Ms. Robinson'? I've never heard you use her name."

Michael blinks, caught off guard. "It's -- I guess I haven't really given it much thought." He says, in a tone that seems to indicate the opposite as he busies himself with opening boxes and cans. "It's very silly."

"Try me."

"Well, it's -- I guess it's a way to keep me from feeling too familiar to her, while also being, y'know, respectful," he turns a burner on the stove on, pausing for the gas line to make it's loud _click-click-click_ before ignition. "Not that everyone else is disrespecting her by calling her Gertrude, I know, it's just. It feels different for me."

"Different in what way?" Gerry leans against the kitchen counter as Michael pours salt into a pan full of water and sets it on the burner.

"I don't know. Just different. Have you ever felt like you're just -- like you only ended up where you are because of some bizarre stroke of dumb luck?"

Gerry just barely swallows back a laugh. "I'm not sure I've ever ended up anywhere because of 'luck' but I think I know what you mean."

Michael considers him. "Fate, then. It doesn't have to be good or bad, I suppose. Just that feeling like everything in your life has somehow put you somewhere, with basically no regard for you or your actions." He pulls out a glass pan and sets the temperature on the oven. "I guess that sounds terribly cynical of me, but I don't really mean it like that. I just mean -- sometimes I think that I'm not actually meant to be where I am and that Ms. Robinson -- Gertrude -- gave me a chance when I shouldn't have had one, so," the flat noodles slide out of the box and into the boiling water with a faint splash as Michael shakes the box. "I try and stay as respectful as I can. I told you it was silly."

It's definitely not what Gerry expected, to say the least. "So you think Gertrude hiring you was in defiance of whatever fate you were tied to?"

"Well when you say it like that," Michael laughs, mostly to himself, giving Gerry a baleful look. "I don't know. It sometimes feels like I both am and am _not_ where I'm supposed to be. And most of the time I try and convince myself that that's a good thing. Or at least better than whatever mysterious alternative is out there."

"You're much more philosophical than you look, you know that?" Gerry reaches across the counter for the can opener and the final, unopened can of tomato paste; busies himself with it as Michael preps the noodles.

"Multitudes, remember?" His laugh is much more genuine this time. It makes Gerry grin.

The lasagna turns out perfectly fine.

* * *

Thankfully, Gerry had plenty of practice falling asleep in unfamiliar places and, luckily, Michael's flat was actually plenty cozy; leagues away from the safe room in the archives, to say the least. And he'd even sort-of-accidentally caught a glimpse of Michael in his pajamas before he'd closed his own door which had felt like a very weird little voyeuristic treat.

...Which makes him feel kind of creepy, now that he thinks it.

At least it wasn't invasive or anything, like so much of the voyeurism in his life has tended to be thanks to The Eye. And really, Michael is just -- he's cute, is the problem. Gerry can't really recall ever meeting anyone like him, least of all someone who's so deeply embroiled in their little fucked up secret world. There's a sweetness to him that's probably covering something he's trying very hard not to let show through, but even then, it doesn't feel disingenuous or artificial.

Also, the fact that he was so willing to invite Gerry into his home after less than a week's worth of casual interactions hasn't escaped his notice. It's abundantly clear that Michael is not only extremely quick to trust, he's also extremely eager for it. It's the sort of personality type that could be very easily taken advantage of, in the right hands, which makes Gerry feel a strange sort of protectiveness start to creep up in the back of his head.

This is detrimental to just about everything, of course. He can at least be objective about his objectivity starting to fail him.

And speaking of objectivity, he's still going to have to deal with his fa--

With Eric. Tomorrow, and probably every day after, until this mess is fixed.

He doesn't have a plan.

He's not, expressly, worried about giving too much away or damaging the timeline somehow -- though in the last day or so he's started believing that whole possibility to be a fake sci-fi movie thing, thank god -- he never actually knew his dad to begin with. There was nothing he could say that might give him away, short of, you know, calling him 'dad' or something. But rather than making him feel better, or at least more secure, it just made a strange little ball of shame solidify in his stomach.

For a very long time growing up, he'd been fixated on trying to learn any scrap of information he could about his dad. It was never much. His mom certainly wasn't sharing. Wasn't sentimental either -- Gerry was very lucky to have even seen a photo or two of him.

And then, when he was old enough to understand exactly what his mother was, about what she'd done -- though she never admitted it to his face -- he'd just been so angry, in that feeble directionless way that ultimately amounted to nothing and lashed out from every angle at once. He can still remember the fight they'd had, midway through one of Mary's lessons when he'd just exploded, all cracking teenaged voice and self righteous fury, demanding to know if she'd really done it, if she'd killed him.

Mary hadn't even flinched. She'd just leveled a look that stopped him short and said something like, 'the man you think you miss never even existed,' then told him to sit down and finish his note taking.

He doesn't know why that stuck with him the way it did. He remembers being angry for a long time, even after, but the anger was different, like all at once Mary had reminded him that all these things he thought he'd been cheated were just in his head. He was being haunted by a ghost he'd only imagined.

But Eric Delano was real. And Gerry had yet to decide how that should make him feel.

What are you supposed to say to your father you never knew, six years before your mother murders him?

For one split, hysterical second, the idea of trying to warn him about Mary drifts to the foreground of his brain. If there was ever a way to stress-test his theory of being unable to change the future, that would definitely be it, wouldn't it? The problem was it ran the risk of him never being born which -- okay, while he wasn't the most risk-averse person in the world, the idea of simply ceasing to be did terrify him a little. And perhaps even more importantly, it would absolutely blow his already flimsy cover.

Even if he ran up to Eric tomorrow and said 'it's me, your son from the future, you can't marry Mary Keay, she's going to kill you' and Eric for whatever reason, _believed_ him, that's not the kind of experience you keep to yourself. Everyone would know the truth and Gerry's access to the Archives and to any possibility of getting home would be cut off at the knees -- or, failing that, everyone would think he was just some lunatic. The effect would be the same either way.

All of which was to say he had to figure out some way to relate to his own father when he barely knew how to relate to...well, anyone really. Casually or otherwise.

The boxy digital alarm clock on the nightstand blinks 12:07 AM into the gloom of the room and offers no answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how when you're riding a roller coaster and you get to like, not _quite_ the top of the first hill, but like, high enough that you really realize like "oh wow we're really far up" but there's still like, maybe a few more seconds before you actually hit the drop?
> 
> That's kind of what this chapter is, to me. Which is to say: The rom-com-y part of this story is very rapidly drawing to a close and there's some Rough Stuff (TM) on the horizon. Also maybe a ratings bump relatively soon, which depending on who you are might be exciting or a bummer. If/when that happens I'll be sure to include notes for how to skip any genuinely nsfw (sexual) stuff if that's your speed, but I'm honestly still playing with a handful of ways for the necessary parts to pan out for the rest of the story so! Yeah, just a heads up, I guess.
> 
> Again, not a ton of notes here but:
> 
> \- Fiona's cat's real name is actually Sir Paddington, after Paddington Bear. How did anyone get 'Meatball' out of that? Great question. My dog's name is Beesly but I call him Guppy and I literally have no idea why. Same principal applies. 
> 
> \- I don't eat lasagna and I've never cooked it, so please cut me some slack if my deliberately vague descriptions of the process are wrong. I've been doing, and will continue to do, an astronomical amount of research to bolster this fic's world building but apparently actually looking up a recipe is a bridge too far. 
> 
> \- My working title/premise for this chapter was 'Now That's What I Call Foreshadowing.' 
> 
> \- Chapter title from ABBA's incredible ballad [Fernando](https://open.spotify.com/track/1IxDBsZdVMhfkLqrZjARpk?si=KW0ADxFxR1O2ve484RJ2GQ), because I missed writing ABBA facts here.


	8. Parables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A kiss and a conversation.

Sometimes, problems crop up where you least expect them.

Gerry ought to know this. It is practically one of the major defining characteristics of his entire life.

Here is a problem Gerry did not see coming when he agreed to move out of the Institute's safe room: A freshly showered Michael Shelley.

This is now a thing Gerry has to process, on top of everything else.

It was an accident, really. He'd woken up, feeling half dead and entirely still exhausted, and heard the shower running but he hadn't given it much thought, especially as he opened the door to the spare room just as it had cut off and then --

Well.

At least they didn't literally run into each other like they had that first time one of them had opened a door without thinking.

The hallway was not that wide and the washroom was directly across from the spare bedroom.

Michael's hair still held some of its curl, even toweled off and wet, falling in loose straw-colored waves and messy loops around his chin, clinging in squiggles to the nape of his neck. He wasn't wearing his glasses, so his eyes looked smaller. The bathroom mirror behind him, still mostly fogged by steam, gave him a strange double; a not-shadow blurred by the condensation and Gerry could almost make out the lines of his back, long and lean and --

Oh.

"Sorry!" Michael squeaked, flushing even darker than the ruddiness left behind by the hot water. "I was trying to be quiet I--" His face does something complicated and the next part comes out almost as a single world, "there's-an-extra-towel-for-you-behind-the-door--" And at that he practically darts into the master bedroom and shuts the door behind him, leaving Gerry standing lamely in the hall feeling like like a dial-up modem searching for a signal.

_Oh._

Well.

Shit. Alright. Gerry could handle multiple deeply existential problems at once, why not, right? This entire situation had him so overwhelmingly out of his depth why _not_ just toss one more issue on the pile. Accidentally getting a crush while time traveling? Sure. Whatever. Par for the course.

He definitely did not think about the way Michael apparently had a weird little constellation of moles just beneath his collarbone or the way his entire face changed without his glasses as he showered and got dressed.

It was fine.

He wasn't going to make it weird or anything.

Things immediately got weird less than thirty minutes later when Gerry walked into the kitchen with his hair still damp, leaving little darker speckles onto his already black shirt, to find Michael anxiously sorting and re-sorting the files he'd brought home last night. Or maybe these were ones he'd already had. Gerry hadn't seen him working on anything after they'd eaten last night, at least. Maybe he had a desk in his bedroom or something.

Actually now that he thought about it, it was maybe a little odd that the spare room hadn't been turned into an office by now, if Michael was in the habit of bringing his work home but--

Michael cleared his throat and stood up, really stood up to his full height -- less, Gerry assumed, because he actually wanted to and more because he had that deer-in-the-headlights look for a split second that sometimes comes with all your muscles tensing up at once -- and then promptly slouched in on himself with a timid "I'll be ready in just a moment, sorry!"

It makes Gerry feel terrible, really, to see him so clearly embarrassed and unsure of what to do -- especially because if anyone in the room ought to feel embarrassed and responsible, it really ought to be Gerry, who had spent the majority of the interaction not-so-subtly staring. Ogling, even. And yet here Michael was, fretting like somehow he'd done something wrong by existing in his own flat in front of a guest.

Gerry takes the three and a half steps necessary to close the gap and puts a hand on Michael's shoulder. He's about to say, 'it's okay, relax,' but it suddenly strikes him that this is actually the first time he's ever touched Michael beyond a handshake or a casual brush of shoulders in the hall. It's the first time he's touched with intent.

He doesn't say anything.

Michael's eyes go very wide behind his glasses.

He doesn't say anything.

In North America, there is a bird called a Killdeer. It's a drab looking thing, mostly tan and white with a little black. Nothing fancy. The thing that sets them apart from any other songbird is the fact that they make their nests on the ground, rather than in trees. If you get too close to a Killdeer's eggs, it will actually start to limp around -- playing like it has a broken wing, or that it's sick and weak and an easy target all to try and lure you away from the nest, and then, once you're far enough away, it'll take off, leaving you confused, hungry, and probably a little lost.

Mary had taught Gerry about Killdeer as a sort of parable. Her point had been the danger of assuming anything is telling the truth, that every action should be approached with appropriate suspicion; that anything could be a trap.

Gerry had always thought the Killdeer's real lesson was not to underestimate things that looked unremarkable on the outside.

Michael's wide eyes sharpen, in a way -- not a threat, but a sudden intention and maybe it's because he's only seen Michael look like Bambi that this new, deliberate focus feels like an actual spark, or maybe it's just because Michael is just...well, objectively pretty. Genuinely pretty. Gerry can admit that -- he could it admit it before this morning but now he can _really_ admit it but in that fraction of a second the air has changed and --

He thinks about the way Michael had laughed and said ' _Multitudes, remember?_ ' a night or a lifetime ago.

The kiss is very abrupt and very clumsy. It's hardly a kiss at all, really, more of a peck -- for the build up, for the _look_ in Michael's eye just moments before, it would probably deserve to be called anti-climatic. Michael just leaned in with such purpose. It was so fast but not fast enough that Gerry couldn't have ducked away if he'd been adverse to the idea.

The intention was there, and the intention was abundantly clear.

(Gerry was not, in fact, adverse to the idea, it turned out.)

But a sudden, unmistakable press of lips to the corner of Gerry's mouth is all that happens before Michael jerks back, all the fire in his eyes immediately and instantly extinguished in favor of something that's just this side of terror. Or maybe shame. Or both. Gerry's seen him blush plenty but never like this -- it's less cute and more heartbreaking. His voice is smaller than Gerry's ever heard it when he quickly averts his gaze and mumbles, "sorry, sorry, I --" and then ducks out from under Gerry's hand.

"I've -- go on without me, I'll be -- I'll let Ms. Robinson know that I'm going to be late." And with that, before Gerry can even get Michael's entire name out of his mouth, he's off down the hall and into his own bedroom. The door does not slam behind him, which makes the click of the lock seem even louder than it actually is.

For a moment, Gerry can only stand there and blink at nothing.

A lot of strange things have happened to him lately, even if you disregard the whole time travel thing, but being kissed by a very cute boy who may or may not be secretly a monster, and then having said boy _literally run away from him_ was threatening claim the number one spot.

Gerry knows, if this were some sort of cliched romance novel or something, the correct move would be to march himself down the hallway and try and talk some sense -- or at least figured out what the hell just happened -- with Michael; stand outside his door and try to talk to him through it. Convince him to open up. If Gerry's life were a scripted story, that would be the big moment, he thinks.

But he never did much care of books.

And the truth is, he's not sure if putting Michael on the spot like that would actually be the best idea, considering just how quickly and abruptly his energy had changed and then changed again. It didn't seem fair to try and corner him, especially not in his own home when he had literally nowhere else to retreat to.

The corner of his mouth tingles oddly where Michael's lips had been, like the remnant of a static shock.

In the end, he opts to split the difference, grabs the pad of sticky notes left abandoned by Michael's bag on the table and a pen and writes:

_Michael --  
I'm not upset or mad at you, I promise!  
We should probably talk about it though,  
\-- G_

It seems middle-of-the-road enough to not provide any undue pressure but also positive enough, he hopes, to not add any unnecessary anxiety. And really he would like to -- well, okay, that's a whole different can of worms, because, yes, he _would_ like to actually properly kiss Michael, absolutely, but there are so many problems in just that _concept_ alone it makes Gerry's head start to hurt.

How, exactly, would something like that even work? Even if Michael wasn't a monster or an Avatar or deliberately trying to fuck with his head, the idea of having a full fledged make-out session with a person after _time traveling_ to _two years before his own birth_ just screams "problem."

So, so, so many problems.

"I'll see you at the Institute, okay?" Gerry calls out to the empty apartment, hoping his voice sounds at least 40% less overwhelmed than he actually feels.

There is no response.

* * *

Without Michael around, Gerry realizes very abruptly that he feels incredibly exposed in the Archives, which he understands is absurd on an intellectual level because it's not like Michael was ever actually defending him from anything or anyone in the first place. But still, he was a nice buffer, especially for Fiona who Gerry liked, really, but could get overwhelming fast.

So he spent the morning trying to make himself as scarce as possible.

It's not an entirely alien experience. In his first few weeks as an Institute employee back home, he'd done everything in his power to keep his head down and cultivate a nice, safe little distance between him and his new coworkers. This was partially because he'd never actually _had_ 'coworkers' before and the entire concept stressed him out in a very visceral way -- having people who were supposed to have access to your work and also have your back in a bind went against virtually everything he'd ever been taught in his life.

And there was also the whole Mary problem, independent of all his personal complexes and traumas. Her name wasn't exactly an unknown element in the Institute and it was difficult to move around the halls and not feel like everyone was averting their eyes or worse, pitying him or something. The stares and the hastily ducked gazes were honestly something he was mostly used to, even though it felt a little different coming from people he had to interact with on the regular rather than faceless strangers he'd never see again -- but having people actively try and, you know, empathize or whatever; click their tongues and mumble 'oh that poor boy' to each other when he was around? That was absolutely miserable.

Of course things eventually started balancing themselves out, especially as Sasha and Tim started taking some genuine interest in him beyond 'hey aren't you the son of the woman who skinned herself alive?' Not that Gerry had ever begrudged them their curiosity -- he understood more than most how hard it was to look away from things like that, especially in their little world -- but it took a few months to really get over that hurdle. And by then Gerry had pretty much mastered the art of avoiding people in the Archives to the absolute best of his ability.

It's coming in handy now, here in 1983, with only one small problem. People here had, for whatever reason, very, very different habits than the people Gerry had known back home. Meaning common spaces that were usually totally empty or unused back in 2018 were now bustling hubs of coming and going.

Maybe it was the lack of cell phones or something, or the fact that no one could spend their lunch breaks dicking around on their computers. There were no real computers.

Whatever the cause, Gerry's favorite haunt -- the little nook area by the break room with the table that no one ever used -- was only empty for about ten minutes after he arrived.

"Mind if I join you?"

Eric didn't really wait for a response before sitting down in the opposite chair, all polite grin and casual ease, totally unaware of the air raid sirens currently blaring at maximum volume inside Gerry's head.

He must have nodded, because Eric's face doesn't fall, even at the silence. "Gerry, right? Or do you prefer Gerard? I know Fiona can be a little familiar."

"G-" He clears his throat, embarrassingly, tries to pass it off like he just has dry mouth and takes a sip of his already luke-warm tea to cover, "Gerry's fine, thanks. Eric, right?"

"Correct." Eric laughs a little, so easily, like Gerry just guessed the right answer at trivia night. "You're -- what did Fiona say, on a special assignment, or something? She was sort of vague about it."

"That's -- yeah, I suppose that's correct. I'm a bit of a, uh, freelancer." It's the same thing he's been telling everyone, no reason to change things up now, "I travel a lot, work with a bunch of different people."

"Ah, alright. That makes sense. My fiancé is sort of in that freelance area, too. Have you ever worked with her? Mary Keay?"

Gerry almost chokes again, takes another long sip of his tea -- if this keeps up he's going to have to make himself another cup very soon. Shit, maybe that would be a good way to escape. His heart is thumping in his ears.

If Eric notices, he shows absolutely no sign.

"No, I --" The very small, quiet part of Gerry's mind that isn't blasting a klaxon or telling him to run for dear life sees an opportunity here. It's delicate and dangerous and absolutely another entry into the ever growing list of absolutely idiotic bullshit Gerry has done in his life that could get him maimed, killed, or in this specific case, potentially erased from the timeline. He's always been bad at making careful choices in desperate situations. That's how he got into this mess, after all. "I don't know her, but Michael mentioned her. What is she like?"

It's almost painful to watch the way Eric's whole face changes from casual familiarity to absolutely besotted in seconds. His shoulders slouch a little, his grin turns into a smile, he rests his elbows on the table so he can move his hands more freely. It's almost cartoonish. It makes Gerry's insides clench up painfully.

"Mary's -- she's a bit of a character, really. Isn't that what people always say when they want to talk about someone who's totally unique? I don't mean it in the pejorative sense or anything. I mean it literally. She's so hard to describe because she's not like anyone else."

He's not lying, is the thing. Gerry knows probably more than anyone in the entire world how unlike other people Mary actually was. He just came at the problem from a very different angle, apparently. When he swallows it feels like there's gravel in his throat.

Eric continues. "Sorry, I don't mean to sound corny or anything. We met -- well, she doesn't work here obviously, but she works with Gertrude sometimes, so we met here. She's a collector of specific items, dangerous stuff, really, I don't think anyone else could handle it the way she can. That's why I asked if you'd worked with her." He laughs a little self consciously then, like he's just now realizing how obvious he's being. "I promise I wasn't fishing for an excuse to tell a stranger about my love life."

"It's alright, I asked." Gerry knows he has to choose his next words very, very carefully. He finishes his tea to buy himself some time, even though he's not entirely sure if he's going to be able to keep it down. His stomach feels inside out. "Can I ask how long you've been together?"

The self-consciousness evaporates off Eric's face in an instant. "We've been engaged for a little over two months. To be honest I was -- I was kind of shocked that she said yes? She's way out of my league. But we're planning on a small wedding in the fall."

Gerry had never known his parents got married in the fall. As far as he was aware, they never celebrated an anniversary.

He forces a smile that feels very brittle around the edges. "Congratulations. I'm sure it will be lovely."

Eric waves a hand, smiling wider. "Thank you. Now what about you? What actually brings you here? Hopefully not something too dangerous."

Gerry wants to say: Why do you love her? He wants to say: Did you know, even now, what she was? He wants to say: What's your favorite color? Where did you grow up? What brought you here? Why now? Why this job? Did you name me? Did you want to be a dad?

He wants to say: Would knowing the truth change anything or is that not what love is?

Instead he says: "No, no, nothing dangerous. Sorry, if you'll excuse me -- I actually need to get back to it." And hopes he doesn't seem rude when he walks away.

No one sees him duck into the washroom first, where he locks the door behind him and stares into the dingy mirror for a very long time.

His roots are beginning to show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did warn you that things are going to start cresting the big hill very soon! Which, unfortunately, means that not only are chapters getting longer they're also getting more involved on my end. The good news is my real life catastrophe is mostly out of the way so I can actually write as much as I have been, the bad news is that the whole process is just taking a bit more time.
> 
> All of which is to say: Multiple characters are going to start having Bad Times, some very canon-typical for TMA, others more typical for a very dramatic love story. I'll continue to add tags as things come up!
> 
> Now some notes:
> 
> \- I'm deeply obsessed with Eric's statement in canon and the way he talks about Mary, it's [episode 154](https://the-magnus-archives.fandom.com/wiki/MAG_154:_Bloody_Mary) if you need a refresher. 
> 
> \- Killdeer are absolutely real and their defense mechanisms described here are also absolutely real. 
> 
> \- Mary was a big fan of using the animal kingdom to try and drive home a lot of concepts in Gerry's lessons about the fears, but unfortunately Gerry wound up just thinking a lot of the animals he was supposed to be learning from were cool and/or cute so she had very mixed results.


	9. Coping mechanisms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation and a kiss.

Gerry doesn't see Michael, and thankfully manages to mostly avoid Eric in ways he hopes aren't extremely obvious for the rest of the day, but he does, somewhat surprisingly, see no small amount of Gertrude.

She's buzzing around the Archives in earnest, pulling files, leaving stacks of tapes. Maybe it's because Michael isn't here to run errands for her, but there are other assistants around who could easily pick up the slack if she wanted them to. It's clear she's on some sort of mission.

That afternoon, he finally manages to duck away from the bullpen and to her office, very nearly forgetting to knock -- basically everyone had given up that particular habit with Jon, if only because it was sort of a running gag at this point and they took their jokes where they could get them.

"Come in." Her voice is distracted, even through the door. When Gerry sees her, she's actually standing behind her desk, slightly hunched, rotating between a stack of files in front of her and a stack on one of the cabinets behind her, pulling things from one to the other with great intention.

"I assume this is a good sign." He hopes it's a good sign.

She pauses, and then nods, one sharp motion. "Perhaps. I do not want you to get your hopes up, but I believe I may have found something to indicate that there may actually be a genuine Spiral ritual on the horizon."

This makes Gerry stop to think. The records of most of the rituals pre Jon's arrival at the Archives were a bit of a mess, so perhaps it wasn't completely out of the question, but Gerry honestly cannot remember ever hearing about The Spiral making an attempt -- they certainly haven't had to try and stop one in Gerry's time. The worst The Spiral had ever done was harass them in the form of Micha--

Okay, it was very weird to think about Michael, the monster from Gerry's time now. He'd pushed that almost entirely out of his head. And maybe it was just because he'd already had a very rough day, emotionally and mentally, but now, for whatever reason, remembering that _that_ Michael exists out there somewhere sends a spike of anxiety through the pit of his gut.

But anxiety or no, The Spiral was largely considered to be one of the tamer fears back in 2018. Not that it wasn't lethal and horrible -- it was -- but compared to something like The Stranger with their whack-a-mole game of trying The Unknowing, or The Corruption with those godforsaken worms, The Spiral was kind of a nonissue. A nuisance, a distraction, a rake to be stepped on.

Which means that either Gertrude is wrong, and there is no ritual on the horizon, or the ritual is inevitably going to be stopped and is nothing for Gerry to stress about, _or_ his presence here really has disrupted the flow of the timeline and now something that should not be happening is happening and about to tear the universe apart.

Two of those options seem mostly fine. One of them seems like a major deal breaker.

Gertrude, unsurprisingly, does not comment on whatever expression of trepidation crosses Gerry's face. "I am still in the early stages of my research here. It is something I've had some suspicion about for some time. Now I am not so naïve as to assume that a Spiral ritual could secretly be a time machine for you, but I do believe that it could be a concrete step taken towards unraveling that particular mystery."

It's a bit of a shot in the dark, Gerry can tell, but she's not wrong. "So what is the ritual?"

"That I have yet to determine. Things with The Spiral are, as ever, loosely based in reality at best but I'm in the process of trying to narrow down several potential locations as well as several possible Avatars or entities that may be involved." She gestures to her pile of work, almost dismissively. "Though, I will say, your existence seems to indicate that we are indeed successful in stopping this, given there would not be a 2018 for you to come from had it actually worked."

Ah. There it was. "About that --" Gerry starts and then stops, trying to pick his phrasing carefully. "I have no knowledge of a Spiral ritual ever happening in our records, in, you know, my Institute. Which doesn't mean it _didn't_ happen, of course, but -- this could be something new."

Gertrude seems to consider this, nodding silently for a moment. "The possibility had crossed my mind that there might be some sort of anomaly at work here from your arrival. I'll continue to explore our options."

"Alright." Gerry's about to leave when he pauses, a thought occurring as almost a complete non sequitur. "Oh -- one other question. Unrelated."

She raises one well-groomed eyebrow at him. The best invitation he'll probably ever get.

"Why did you hire Michael?"

What he said the other night still hasn't left Gerry's head, about fate or destiny or whatever, and being given the chance to circumvent it for better or worse. He honestly just wants the other side, assuming Gertrude will give it to him.

She doesn't seem set off balance or anything by the abrupt pivot, but her expression does change into something harder, with straighter lines, like she doesn't appreciate the asking.

"Mr. Shelley had an impressive transcript, and as you might assume, a genuine interest in our work which can be difficult to come across." Her face turns a bit wry as she continues, "also there's the matter of salary, which for a recent graduate is less of an issue. Why do you ask?"

"I just -- I don't know, he seemed to think you had some sort of sixth sense about him, which, considering," he gestures broadly to the room around them, meaning the Institute at large, "you very well could have."

She actually almost _smirks_ at this, which pings Gerry as very odd, like he'd just stumbled into a joke he didn't know the punchline too. Though the thought of Gertrude Robinson telling a joke is so inherently absurd he's immediately uncomfortable with the concept. "I can assure you," she says, turning back to her files as she speaks, "if I had been so lucky as to have a sixth sense about Mr. Shelley, I'm not sure I would have hired him at all."

It dawns on Gerry then that she's lying. Or maybe not lying, but at least leaving something out. Gerry just doesn't know what, or more importantly, why.

She does not return her attention to him. He does not push the issue.

* * *

Gerry spends the tube ride back to Michael's flat so deeply lodged in his own head he nearly misses the stop. It feels like being trapped in a room with three televisions turned on simultaneously, all tuned to different channels, all at max volume. His aborted conversation with Eric, whatever Gertrude was trying to keep from him, and...this morning, hitting him from all angles, all at once.

The first two, he can really do nothing about -- at least not now, and certainly not yet, so he makes a conscious effort to try and tune them out, or at least turn them down, as he walks up the stairs to Michael's door.

He never got a key. He has to knock.

He's not sure if he even expects an answer -- has no real contingency plan if that happens -- but seconds after he finally hits his knuckles against the wood he hears Michael's voice from the other side. "It's unlocked!"

He's doing dishes at the sink when Gerry walks in, back ramrod straight and face schooled into what Gerry can only imagine is his best attempt at casual normalcy. It might even be convincing if Gerry hadn't spent the last week or so paying such close attention to him.

Before he even has a chance to say hello, Michael continues. "About this morning, I just -- I wanted to apologize. I really don't know what came over me, and I'm so embarrassed." He sets one plate down and switches to another, the water is hot enough that Gerry can see steam rising off of it when he sets it aside. Michael isn't wearing gloves. His hands are splotchy and wrinkling with the water. "I completely understand if you'd rather not stay --"

It's too much. It's too much self flagellation for what ultimately amounted to a mistake that Gerry was an equal part of. That _Gerry_ should have known better than to indulge. Michael was the one here who was allowed to just have a normal crush. Gerry was the one keeping secrets.

If Michael keeps scrubbing at the plates like he is, Gerry is certain his hands are going to start cracking and bleeding when they're dry.

It's just too much.

For the second time that day, Gerry closes the gap between them, this time reaching out to take his wrists, stop his hands from plunging back into the hot water. The position is awkward. Michael doesn't try to pull away, but he does instantly go very, very still, like maybe Gerry is a T-Rex who can't see him if he doesn't move.

"Michael," Gerry keeps his hold loose, wanting to afford Michael as much of an invitation to pull away and even to run again, if he wants to, "please just take a breath for me, alright?"

Michael's throat bobs as he swallows and nods. That carefully curated air of normalcy and prepared apology rising off of him like the steam from the water in the sink. "Sorry. I'm really sorry." He nods again. "I was completely out of line."

It's strange to watch someone this closely and to see all these parts of them you're only now starting to consciously recognize. It had probably always been there, Gerry realizes, these very obviously splintered edges around Michael's whole self; it had probably been obvious even on that first day when he'd watched him stumble through an apology in Gertrude's office and then later, when he'd cringed his way through an introduction the following morning. Gerry had been able to clock just how badly Michael was trying to reach out, to trust, to invite others in; all that self conscious sweetness in him, and he'd assumed it was a cover for something, but now, staring him in the face, he can see it plain as day.

Sometimes the world teaches you that the path of least resistance is the correct one with force and cruelty and swift, terrifying retribution. Gerry ought to know, that's how he'd lived most of his life.

He might never know what it was that hurt Michael so badly to shape him like this, but he doesn't need to. It doesn't matter. He knows what someone standing on a knife's edge looks like and -- well, suddenly, all those problems, the ones that may or may not (but probably, definitely will) happen to the time stream feel like they no longer matter in the face of this kind, nervous, sweet boy with pruney hands and a fluttering pulse and a mouth full of unnecessary apologies.

Fuck it.

"Michael." He says again, a bit firmer, "can I kiss you?"

There's a beat where absolutely nothing happens. Gerry isn't even sure if Michael takes a breath.

And then, with that same sudden sharp intention all at once evident in his eyes, he's nodding, a tiny movement that precedes a much larger one, Michael's wrists breaking away from Gerry's hands to cup his face, rest against his jaw.

Arguably it's Michael who's kissing _him_ and not the other way around, despite the question asked. It's still just as clumsy and as half-way stilted but neither of them jerk back immediately and Gerry can feel where the tips of Michael's still slightly wet fingers are brushing against his hair, his ears, the stubble on his cheeks. It must only last just a handful of seconds, and never gets any deeper, but when he does pull back Michael's eyes are huge and his lips are just slightly parted and pretty. He doesn't drop his hands.

There's a lot going on in Gerry's head in that moment, but strangely the first thing that bubbles to the surface in a meaningful way is how much he likes this expression on Michael's face more than that split second terror from earlier today.

God, this is such a bad idea.

He leans in and kisses him again, angling for something a little more elegant than a peck, running his teeth over the swell of Michael's bottom lip in invitation. He practically feels Michael's knees start to go weak, which at once makes him smirk -- bit of an ego boost there -- and brace his hands on Michael's narrow waist. This is almost a proper kiss -- almost -- maybe it would be if either of them were a little more experienced, but it's abundantly clear that Michael hasn't really done this and Gerry certainly hasn't had a lot in the way of practice either, but it's _nice_. It's slow and soft and the heat that's there feels kind of far off, cozy rather than urgent.

When they break away this time, Michael still looks a little dazed. Gerry's become rather adept at reading his blushes with how frequently they happen and this one is bright and stained across the bridge of his nose, over his cheekbones, under his glasses. Gerry bets that if he were to reach up and tuck some of his hair behind his ears, they'd be pink too.

So he does, just to confirm, and sure enough.

"There," he finally says, as Michael's hands hesitantly fall from his face, "that wasn't so bad now was it?"

The moment snaps easily, toothpick brittle, and Michael bursts out laughing, bright and honest and absurd, scrunching his entire face up, and he's so close that Gerry gets to see the way it changes the shape of him at once. It makes him laugh too.

Their little fit, all joyful incredulity and excitement, probably lasts longer than the kisses themselves actually did. Gerry doesn't even mind. It feels good. Not a lot has felt good in the past couple of weeks, least of all today.

"No, not so bad at all," Michael finally catches his breath. "But I still am --"

"Don't you dare say you're sorry for this morning," Gerry interrupts. "You're allowed your hang-ups as much as anyone. I've certainly got plenty to go around."

Like the fact that Michael still didn't know that Gerry wasn't supposed to be here at all; that all of this was the product of some weird cosmic glitch or the machinations of an eldritch deity.

Michael rolls his eyes, put-upon and deeply embarrassed but clearly still happy. It's buzzing around him like the charge on an electric fence; an almost audible hum. "Okay, alright. I'll stop making a fool of myself."

"Good." Gerry nods, then takes a step back to grab a hand towel off the stove's handle and tosses it Michael's direction, for his still-damp hands. "We should probably actually talk about this, too, in the name of those hang-ups. Why don't you finish up, I'll order take out, and then we can both actually be adults instead of hormonal teenagers for the first time today?"

"Tough, but fair, I suppose," Michael half winces even as he chuckles, reaching in to drain the sink before drying off his hands. "I will warn you, though. I can't promise not to make this conversation _incredibly_ awkward. You'll be surprised, I'm sure, to learn that my coping mechanisms for emotional turmoil have traditionally involved running away."

Gerry barks out a surprised laugh, which makes Michael grin, obviously very pleased with himself for landing the joke, risky as it was. "Well, if you run this time, how about I promise to chase you? Sound fair?"

"Sounds fair."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey-oooooo! More smooching! More foreshadowing! We're taking the plunge! Have I made it obvious enough that my favorite part of relationship building in stories is actually forcing people to sit down and speak to one another? 
> 
> Also sorry I've been unreliable about responding to comments lately, I've been neck deep in the parts of this story that are tricky to write and trickier to edit on top of some things happening in my real life so it's been hard to keep up but THANK YOU for all the support, it means the world to me. 
> 
> No real notes for this chapter! There are some rough things and things specific to this AU coming up soon though so please mind the tags in the next few days, whenever I get 10 up. I'll also notate major things in the note at the beginning, but I know how reading in-progress stories can be especially if you're not expecting it, so consider this your heads up!


	10. Honesty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things that leave marks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains mentions of Mary Keay's terrible parenting, references to dubiously consensual body modification in the form of tattooing, and brief references to self harm.

Gerry had, up to this point, read Michael's obvious need to trust people as endearing, a trait that was probably most dangerous to Michael himself. He'd never considered it the other way around; that somehow Michael Shelley's magnetic need to pull everyone around him in, to share himself any way he could, would actually make it easier to trust him in kind.

Or, well, maybe he had, in an abstract way. He did wind up developing a raging crush on the guy he was supposed to be investigating, so. Trust was a relative thing, he supposed. Also, now there was kissing involved which certainly did not make him any less prone to feeling like he could just spill his guts.

When they'd started this conversation over mediocre Chinese take out at Michael's kitchen table, Gerry had confidently told himself that he was going to only be as revealing as he had to. The game plan was simple: This was going to be a no-strings-attached thing, Gerry "moved around" for his imaginary freelance job a lot, they were both adults, they could be mature about wanting to make out with each other, it was going to be fine. No need to pretend that it was a big deal.

But then Michael had opened his mouth, all raw nerve earnestness and well kept secrets, and said, "I've never -- I don't know what's happening in my head, making me like this, and I'm scared of it, and I know it sounds completely absurd, but I like being around you so much." And Gerry felt the first cracks in his resolve start to show.

Instead of making eye contact, Michael is intent on tracing the grain lines of the wood in the table top with his finger tips, dizzying patterns that loop in and back and in on themselves.

"It's not absurd," Gerry starts, then pauses for a beat. "Well, maybe it's absurd. My perspective on absurdity is, admittedly, not the best." The laugh that earns is weak, but Gerry will take it. "I don't think either of us can claim to be the most normal or well adjusted people in the world." A more earnest laugh at that, a very lopsided grin. "I like being around you, too. Is what I mean."

"Well, I'm glad we're in agreement on that front." Michael actually looks at him then. Some of that intention from this morning is creeping back in around the seams of him, sharpening his edges just enough that Gerry can notice, looking closely as he is. "Would it scare you if I told you it feels like I already knew you, even before I met you?"

Gerry studies him very, very carefully. In any other context, it would sound like a cheap pick-up line, but he knows immediately that that isn't what Michael is aiming for. His hands have stopped moving on the table. He's squared his shoulders. This is honesty, even though it's strange. "It wouldn't scare me, but you'll need to tell me more." Gerry finally allows, feeling like he's probably not going to like the answer.

Michael nods, a tiny half-aborted motion; lets his eyes slide off to the middle distance for a second. "It's -- difficult to explain. It's not a good or bad feeling, as far as I can tell. It's sort of like deja vu. I felt it right away, and then you were so kind to me, and so handsome, and -- well." He glances up, sheepish; trying to pass it off as a joke. Gerry knows it's not. "Christ, it sounds like I'm trying to recycle lines out of some corny movie or something, doesn't it?"

Gerry sees the flash of an opportunity to cut some of the tension and takes it. "Did you think I was handsome when you brought me that god awful outfit?"

Michael's dweeby, weird little laugh still makes Gerry smile. Mission accomplished. "Don't be mean to me, I'm trying to be serious."

His voice is so shy, even under the giggle. His eyes are so sweet. Gerry just -- he wants to tell him everything.

This is such a bad idea.

"I know -- it's -- okay, I'm going to," Gerry pauses, takes a deep breath in through his nose, exhales. "I'm about to tell you something that's going to make me sound completely out of my mind." This was such a _colossally_ bad idea. "So bear with me, right?"

Michael's brows knit together but he nods.

"I'm not a freelancer, or on some sort of special assignment, or whatever else I've told you and everyone else. I was -- involved in something with The Spiral and it sent me here from 2018." It feels less like tearing a bandaid off and more like pressing his hand to the stove. For a long moment, Michael doesn't say anything.

And then, eloquently, he says, "what?"

Gerry sighs, tipping his head forward to briefly press the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I know," he says, "like I said, out of my mind, right? But it's true. You can ask Gertrude, though I would prefer you didn't because -- well, I'm sort of relying on her right now and there are a lot of moving parts here. But you could. I would understand. I wish I could give you more information but that's why I'm here and why I've been -- what I've been trying to unravel."

At the absolute bare minimum, admitting the truth to Michael didn't trigger any sort of catastrophic fail safe or otherwise time-ending event, so at least there was that. It could still pose a problem in other ways, of course, but it seemed like Gerry's immediate existence wasn't in question, so that was nice.

Michael watches him, the same furrowed expression pulling at his corners. "You're from 35 years in the future?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know The Spiral could do something like that."

"I don't think anyone did. I certainly didn't."

"And you work at the Institute? In your time?"

"Yes."

Michael pauses again. Gerry gives him the space.

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" He asks finally. His tone isn't hurt or even betrayed, which Gerry realizes is very generous -- there's not a lot of ground for him to stand on here with regards to the trust Michael has so obviously placed in him. He's been lying by omission for the duration of their time together.

"I didn't know what sort of effect it could have on things. I only told Gertrude to gain access to the Archives and start formulating a plan."

"So I suppose I shouldn't ask what this might mean for me in the future," Michael's smile is a tiny, brittle thing, full of uncertainty. "Do you know me at age, what, 67 or something?"

Gerry makes a face; hopes it's gentle enough. "No, I don't think you should, but I can confidently tell you that I have never encountered you as a senior citizen." He doesn't know how to broach the topic of the monster that wears Michael's face in Gerry's time and, for whatever reason, the thought of even bringing it up makes Gerry's stomach tie itself in knots. It may well be another lie by omission but it seems all at once too cruel and too dangerous to share, like even saying the words could pull the pin out of a grenade neither of them can see.

"Hm." Michael nods again, very slowly. "I don't think I want to know my future, either way. It seems like a terrible responsibility to have, and a horrible thing to shoulder on your own."

"Are you --" Gerry nearly laughs at the sudden absurdity of it all, "I just admitted that I've been lying to you and you're comforting me?"

Michael shrugs very slowly at that, pinched corners going smooth, "I'm not saying I'm thrilled about it, but -- I don't know, I don't suppose I could have made it for very long in this line of work if I didn't understand that the truth is sometimes a last ditch alternative, and a dangerous one at that. And besides, knowing that there is some sort of mysterious, supernatural force at work around you does, in fact, help validate some of my weird deja vu in a way, I suppose -- or at least that's what I'm going to tell myself now." His grin is still a little fragile, but crooked now, in a mostly good way.

Gerry thinks about Killdeer, and about the value of not underestimating things you want to instinctually write off.

"Michael, you might be the only person on earth capable of taking something like this so in stride," Gerry says, letting his shock show through, "but for what it's worth, I am sorry for," he waves a hand, indicating everything, "the deception."

"I don't know about that. I think it's less about me as a person and more about the things people in our world have gotten used to." Michael's voice is still so gentle, so much more gentle than Gerry knows he deserves, "But I do have one question, actually, if you're feeling apologetic and up to it."

"Shoot."

"Mary Keay is your mother then? Which makes Eric…"

Gerry winces, plainly, before he can stop himself.

"Ah. It's obvious, I guess, now that I really think about it and know where to look." Michael scans his face, then nods mostly to himself. "I am sorry. Not because I didn't know or didn't recognize it sooner, but because I imagine Mary Keay is the sort of mother who leaves too many marks." His eyes flick down to where Gerry's hands were resting against the table top, black ink eyes on his finger bones staring back, unblinking. It makes Gerry feel abruptly very self conscious, which is odd. It wasn't like people didn't notice his tattoos every single day of his life -- how could they not -- but no one had ever actually made the connection, as far as he knew, or if they had, they certainly never brought it up to his face.

"Sorry," Michael continues, after the silence stretches a fraction of a second too long, "I don't mean to --"

Gerry shakes his head, fighting back the strange self awareness to force both his hands flat on the table. "No, no, it's -- you're not wrong," he tries to laugh and mostly succeeds.

If he thinks too hard about it, he can still remember the way Mary's gloved hands had felt stretching his skin for the needle -- just a single one, held in her dominant hand; the way it felt like a hot pin prick over and over, the way she mumbled under her breath as she worked. He never tried to argue with her about it; spent his 19th birthday washing plasma and scabs and feeling too sore to move too much, his adrenal system working in overdrive. 'You can never trust The Eye,' she had said, 'but you should never underestimate its usefulness. We will tame it for ourselves, but never serve it.'

The really fucked up thing was the way that, in the grand scheme of his worst memories, allowing his mother to etch ritualistic tattoos onto his body didn't even rank that high -- he hadn't been thrilled at the time, of course, but he'd still been so thoroughly under her thumb at that point, still so eager for her approval even on a subconscious level. And, it got rather overshadowed by everything that came after, with the book and the murder and the blood and the ghost.

Still, he doesn't like to revisit that place in his head. Or to remember about how he'd once, not long after his mother's first death, tried to cut one of the tattoos off in a fit of self destructive rage only to peel back his skin and see the black lines of ink, set impossibly deep within the red tissue in the meat of his hand, visible even through the gore. There's still a tiny crescent shaped scar on his left ring finger from his efforts; a white accent to the dark pigment.

His train of thought is derailed as Michael, very gently, sets his hands on top of Gerry's, blotting out the tattoos with his narrow fingers

"I told you that I'd always been interested in the work the Institute does, but I never told you why," he starts, taking Gerry a bit off guard. "When I was a kid, I watched my friend be eaten by what I can only call a very hungry door. Or, at least that's what I told my parents." His eyes dart away, but his hands don't move. Gerry watches him intently. "I didn't tell them that I followed my friend over the threshold into somewhere that couldn't exist, or that I started running and never turned around to see if he was behind me. I found a way out. He didn't, I guess. I don't know how or why."

When Michael meets his eye again, Gerry gets the distinct impression that he's looking at a wound that is somehow both very old and fresh all at once. A raw pink hurt that Michael holds close and careful.

"I don't think my parents knew what to do with this information when I told them. I was so young. A lot of doctors were involved. Eventually, they brought me to the Institute where I made a statement as best I could. It probably still exists somewhere, in the Archives. I never looked for it. But that's why I applied for the job. That's why I knew what the Institute did." He takes a breath, slow and steady, then squeezes both of Gerry's hands in his own. "There, now we've both shared some sort of dark, existential secret."

His smile feels like the sun peaking out from behind a rain cloud, timid but so warm.

Gerry laces their fingers together and squeezes back.

* * *

In all honesty, he'd forgotten just how exhausting honesty can be. It's been a while. And the whole conversation winds up making him feel weirdly raw and over scrutinized in an unfamiliar way. He hadn't even really admitted all that much but he still feels sort of wrung out. He can imagine Michael is feeling it, the vulnerability at least, in a similar war, but that energy -- the intention Gerry keeps getting glimpses of -- is more settled around him, too.

They end up on the couch and after about ten minutes of holding himself far too stiffly to be natural, Gerry finally gives up and lets himself slump against Michael's shoulder, and then, eventually, shift down to rest his head in Michael's lap. It should probably be more awkward than it is, but Michael keeps running his fingers through his hair and the TV's on, turned down so low it's practically just white noise -- some TV show about street urchins solving mysteries, Gerry picks up through long, languid blinks -- and it's just...comfortable. It's nice. The sort of easy silence that comes when there's nothing important or pressing left to say.

It's the sort of silence that lets Gerry get out of his head for once. He nearly falls asleep with Michael's blunt fingernails scratching gently at his scalp.

He does not, in that moment, think about much of anything, including the way Gertrude had lied to him earlier that day.

Eventually he falls asleep and when he dreams, he walks through unfamiliar hallways.

* * *

In 26 years, Gertrude Robinson will be so adept at making sacrifices she believes to be necessary that dismembering a man and hurling his pieces into a pit with her gloved and gore-stained hands will scarcely keep her up at night.

Here, in 1983, as she sits, surrounded by statements old and new and a single personnel file, she wishes more than anything that there was any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would it surprise any of you to know that, in addition to the time travel stuff, the thing that got me most excited about this AU was the chance to play with and expand Michael and Gerry's pasts? I'm a simple man with incredibly simple tastes, I guess. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> \- In this fic, Gerry has 32 eye tattoos, it breaks down like this: 2 on each finger (20 total), 1 on each wrist, 1 on each elbow, 1 on each shoulder, 1 on each knee, 1 on each ankle/top of foot, 1 on his sternum, 1 on the back of his neck. The method of tattooing described here is stick and poke, obviously, with some magical assistance. It would have taken a very, very long time and healing them would have really sucked. 
> 
> \- The idea of the ink being set impossibly, irremovably deep is actually something I'm copping from [episode 12](https://the-magnus-archives.fandom.com/wiki/MAG_12:_First_Aid) where he gets burns all over his body but somehow his tattoos are fine. This also helps explain why he can have tattoos on super movable areas like joints for so long and never have any ink fade or drop out, which is a major problem for normal tattoos, especially in areas like fingers. (This doesn't actually matter at all in the scope of things but I'm really heavily tattooed myself and I think about tattoo logistics on characters I like A LOT) 
> 
> \- Michael's childhood friend is canon according to [episode 101](https://the-magnus-archives.fandom.com/wiki/MAG_101:_Another_Twist), I'm just expanding on the ideas there and bending them a little to suit my needs. 
> 
> \- The show on TV is [The Baker Street Boys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baker_Street_Boys), an incredibly short lived Sherlock Holmes spin-off that only lasted like, 8 episodes. It debuted in March of 1983, though, which is roughly around when this chapter is taking place so they could have caught an episode naturally. 
> 
> \- Not important or relevant but a call-out post for Gerry Keay who thinks he's a lot more careful with trusting people than he actually is.
> 
> \- And finally, Gertrude's poor dismembered pit victim is of course, Vast-touched astronaut [Jan Kilbride](https://the-magnus-archives.fandom.com/wiki/Jan_Kilbride). RIP.


	11. Rocks and hard places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A trap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a character experiencing a panic attack.

Things get simultaneously much easier and much harder.

Gerry had expected the latter more than the former, so it's actually a very welcome surprise. He likes that he can kiss Michael now, almost whenever he wants -- or, at least, whenever he wants within the confines of the flat. It's not exactly the sort of thing they can do anywhere that isn't completely private for a number of reasons, some of which Gerry understands -- like blowing his cover or getting too much attention from Gertrude about his blatantly compromised objectivity -- while others make him a little homesick for even the shittier parts of 2018.

It's fine, though. The fact that he's committed to having this -- whatever this is -- feels thrilling and peaceful and grounding all at once. A silver lining where there really ought to only be rust.

Even moving around the Archives and dealing with Eric feels slightly less daunting now that Michael is in on his secret and can actively step in to mitigate situations that might turn south. He's surprisingly good at it, too. For someone who starts out so clumsily in most public interactions, he really does have a surprising level of awareness both in himself and in other people.

He hasn't really had to put this particular skill to much use, thankfully. Gerry has been desperately trying to not be rude while simultaneously avoiding Eric at all costs and has, largely, been successful. Still, it's nice to have someone he knows can and will act as a buffer should he need it.

Gerry doesn't try to kid himself about Gertrude not knowing, somehow, and on some level what their relationship has become, but she never brings it up -- which, Gerry hopes, means she's too focused on her own research into The Spiral's ritual to have the time or bandwidth for scolding him.

The fact that he's genuinely worried about being _scolded_ feels pathetic if he lingers on it too long, so he just doesn't -- which plays, in some way, into the parts that have now become much more difficult.

Over his thirty-plus years on this planet, Gerry has grown accustomed to feeling like pain and discomfort are only biding their time with him, always looming on the periphery of everything he does. Anticipating horrible things has kept him alive this long. It's an instinct he really does both respect and value, but now he's finding himself on the reverse side of the equation. Rather than anticipating the bad becoming worse, he's struggling against the inevitability of good coming to an end.

He supposes it says something about him, and his fucked up mess of a life, that this is the first time he can genuinely remember trying to stomach something like this -- feeling happy, in one way or another, and knowing that it won't last. That it, in a very literal way, _cannot_ last because at some point, either under his own power or the machinations of the powers themselves, this whole experience is going to come to a close.

There is another shoe and it will, he has no doubt, eventually drop. And he would really rather have some say or control in when that happens, rather than pretending it never will.

So it's...just odd, really. Stomaching it. Wanting to make the most of this strange and happy thing he's found while also protecting himself from the inevitable implosion or explosion, whatever the case may be.

Researching is getting more challenging. More than once, he's found himself almost sliding down the slippery logical slope where he tries to tell himself that there isn't actually anything stopping him from just settling into this. That he could just stay here forever and there would be no consequences.

But, as much as he'd love to, he's never had the luxury of putting blinders on and keeping his head down. No one who sets foot in the Institute has ever had that choice. Not really. Their world has a way of collecting what is due. But Michael, for his part, seems to have hit a surprising sense of zen about the whole thing. Over the last few weeks, as their lives became more and more intertwined, he'd told Gerry that temporary joy still counts as joy, and that he's going to hold on to it when and how he can.

Then he'd kissed Gerry breathless.

He was getting very, very good at that.

Never underestimate what practice and enthusiasm can net you, even in relative secrecy.

As far as Gertrude's research was concerned, nothing major had come up yet -- at least that she'd let Gerry in on. She was still _around_ quite about more, but there were gaps, days at a time when she would vanish before reappearing to request files and stay all hours in her office. It made Gerry equal parts anxious and hopeful.

He has been in 1983 for a little over a month before the rug is pulled out from under him yet again.

The day starts with relative normalcy, Emma glaring at Fiona who is relating some story or another about something she caught on TV, Eric nodding along politely, Michael actively participating in the story so that Fiona doesn't feel underappreciated or ignored. Gerry had decided at that point to try and sneak out, get himself some tea, just stretch his legs a little. It's a route that takes him directly by Gertrude's office, which is usually an added bonus -- he can snoop without actually putting much effort into it, and without being obvious.

He hears her before he sees her.

"I don't know what you expect to learn from that particular book," she says, and Gerry's feet stop working, "Volumes belonging to Es Mentiras are rarely good for more than wasting time."

The door to Gertrude's office is partially open, and through the crack, Gerry can see Mary Keay in profile, younger than he's ever known her but every ounce the woman he knew. Her arms are crossed. Her face is all straight lines.

Gerry feels like he's about to throw up. Or maybe pass out. He doesn't want to move and he wants to run away, all at once.

So much for not being obvious.

"Then you should have no objections to the very healthy sum that the Institute -- oh, Gerard, please come in." Gertrude's voice -- how had she seen him -- how had she known --

Shit. _Shit._

He doesn't want to approach the door, but he does, props it open a bit more, tries to school his face. Mary turns to look at him. Her face betrays absolutely nothing.

Gerry hasn't seen his mother in the flesh for years. He never wanted to again. He doesn't want to _be_ here.

"I can come back --" Get out, get out, don't run, don't behave strangely, just get --

"It's quite alright. Gerard, Mary Keay. Mary, Gerard, one of our new Assistants. He's been looking into the ritual as well."

All at once, Gerry realizes then that he's been caught in a trap. Gertrude had done this on purpose. She would never leave her door open otherwise. When had she ever? This was -- what was it? An experiment? A lesson? He thinks, very suddenly, about the way some animals, like foxes, will gnaw their own legs off to get out of a trap. He stands in the doorway, back straight, one hand still on the knob, and cannot move.

Mary gives him a quick once over, her eyes flicking very obviously to where his tattoos are visible on his knuckles, then to his face, then away. She seems bored. She seems exactly the same as he's always known her. She seems entirely different.

"Hiring anyone now, are you?" It's directed to Gertrude. Gerry's ears are ringing. He knows his expression hasn't changed because it sort of feels like his lips are going numb.

Gertrude rolls her eyes, theatrical, a show, a lie. "You should know better than most to not judge a book by its cover. Gerard has proven himself invaluable to our efforts." Another lie, all lies. "I'm planning on having him help decode this." She gestures to a book on her desk, a clunky, leather bound thing Gerard recognizes immediately as a Leitner. He can't see the cover. It doesn't matter.

"Hm." Mary shrugs, nonplussed as ever. "Certainly looks like he's tamed The Beholding more than some of your other little projects." She's paying close attention to his hand again, cataloguing. Gerry feels flayed open. He wants to hide. He still can't seem to move. "Either way, best of luck," saccharine, over sweet, both to Gertrude and to him, "you'll need it."

She closes the gap between herself and the desk to take a very thick brown paper envelope from Gertrude's grip. Money, Gerry assumes. A lot of it.

He _has_ to move then, step further into the office to let Mary out. She does not say goodbye and she closes the door behind herself.

Gertrude pauses for only a moment before giving him a once over herself. "You should have told me."

It takes Gerry a second to realize she even spoke at all over the sound of his pulse hammering in his ears. "This was an ambush."

He wishes his voice were venomous, instead of just small.

"It was a test, less of you and more of your potential effect on the fabric of our timeline. Though the fact that you did not see this particular bit of information as pertinent during our earliest conversations is troublesome for other reasons." She takes her seat, shifting the large leather bound Leitner to the center of her desk.

Gerry wants to be angry. He wants to summon up some of that directionless fury he found so frequently as a child. Instead, he just feels hollow, like if he were struck he would ring like an empty oil drum. "I never wanted to see her again," is what he finally settles on, by way of explanation.

Gertrude regards him over her glasses. "That much is understandable. I can imagine that Mary Keay is not the most traditional or even the most effective mother." It's not quite benediction, but Gerry senses she intends it to be. It stings like alcohol on a cut and does not soothe. But he doesn't flinch. She continues. "Regardless, there were no visible anomalies by your interaction, even to The Beholding, which is likely a good sign. Mary's abilities may not be connected to any one entity, but she is not an unknown element to any of them and certainly would have provoked _something_ more than our Mr. Delano, had there been anything to be provoked."

Gerry wants to be _angry_. He tries again. "You should have just asked."

The look Gertrude gives him at that is answer enough. It's never as simple as 'just asking' in their world and never would be. Something small and horrible and full of desperate loathing solidifies in his stomach like a rock. It's not the anger he wants. It's nothing useful at all.

"I believe I may have found our next steps," Gertrude continues, resting a hand on the Leitner's cover, "An Amateur Guide To Cartography, known to drive its readers into delusional madness as it slowly strips them of their sense of direction and all familiarity with the places they once knew. The Eye's hold over this place will neutralize the worst of its effects but it will take me some time to properly decode it and I will need your help, and perhaps Mr. Shelley's as well, to make sense of the things I find."

She's pausing to allow Gerry room for a question. He doesn't have one, though he is dimly aware that he ought to be asking why they're going to need a map. Instead, he says "alright," and does not wait to be dismissed as he leaves the office. Gertrude does not ask him to stay.  
He can hear Mary's voice coming from somewhere in the bullpen as he walks, robotic, down the hall. She must be talking to Eric. He didn't want to go back in, to face everyone else, just yet anyway so that's fine.

It's fine.

He doesn't realize he's headed to the washroom until he's closing the door behind him.

The nausea roars in like a very sudden change in the tide and he suddenly finds himself pitching forward and dry heaving into one of the toilets. He hadn't really eaten anything yet today so nothing comes up, just bile and great heaves of air. That, in conjunction with the way his ears are still kind of ringing, makes it difficult to hear the door open and close again.

"Hey, hey," Michael's gentle voice makes him almost panic at first, the deeply ingrained, animal instinct to run and hide in a moment of weakness fighting against his body's confused uselessness. A long, slender hand comes to the nape of his neck and carefully scoops his hair out of the way. "You're alright. It's okay."

Michael's body has to hunch awkwardly around Gerry's in the cramped stall but he doesn't seem to mind. Gerry desperately wishes he could just disappear. Instead, he dry heaves painfully again.

"I'm going to start talking and if it isn't helpful, just tap me or shake your head, alright?" Michael shifts position, leaning against the stall wall and organizing his legs a bit more elegantly around Gerry's heaped body. "When I was little, I used to have panic attacks all the time, especially after my parents split up and sent me to stay with my grandmother. They never told her what happened to me or about the doctors or anything. I don't actually know what they told her, you know, just in general, about the divorce or the subsequent breakdowns both of them went through. Must've been something, I imagine, but I was a kid, I didn't even think to ask."

Gerry breathes in and out through his nose, tries to time it to the easy cadence of Michael's words.

"Anyway when I'd have these attacks, my grandmother would tell me stories. She'd moved from Ireland when she was a young woman, before she married my grandad and had my mom, it changed her accent, but not completely. I always really loved the sound of her voice. The stories were mostly nonsense, I think. Folktales she liberally embellished and only partly remembered, but I always liked listening to them because it made the noise in my head harder to hear." With Gerry no longer actively heaving, Michael moves his hand from his hair to the crown of his head, smoothes it back in long, careful movements. "In her stories, all these scary, monstrous things out in the world could be tricked or fooled or even beat, with the correct application of superstition and a little respect. I liked that they all had rules, even though they could break them from time to time. It made everything feel less helpless and arbitrary."

Gerry leans back just enough to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. He can see Michael's face out of the corner of his eye and miraculously doesn't feel scrutinized.

"I don't know if it makes the most sense," Michael continues, a sort sort of smile playing at the corners of his lips, "especially knowing what we know, but I like to remind myself of that sometimes. That even the scariest things out there can be, you know, tricked, or beaten, or otherwise circumvented if you've just got the right information and the right tools. It makes me feel a little less like a top spinning out of control."

When Gerry finally does stand up, ankles and knees cramping painfully for a split second, Michael steps just enough out of the way to help straighten his jacket and smooth his hair. Gerry wants to kiss him, but knows it would be disgusting. His entire mouth tastes toxic. His eyes, humiliatingly, had started watering and now feel gummy and swollen. "Sorry," he croaks, then clears his throat. "I'm alright."

Michael nods and isn't patronizing when he says "I know you are," and leans in to press a very quick kiss to Gerry's temple.

Thankfully, the washrooms in the Institute are stocked with tiny paper cups and mouthwash so Gerry doesn't have to spend the rest of the day tasting sour and disgusting. He rinses his mouth out three times before he feels even remotely clean again. Then he splashes his face with cold water, wiping away the salt and sweat from around his eyes.

"I'm pretty sure both she and Eric left for the day," Michael offers carefully, "I'm sure you could head home, too. No one would mind."

Gerry sighs. He wants to, but -- "Gertrude is working on something. Actually working on something. I think there's -- I don't know. It feels important. That's why Mary was here in the first place."

"The Ritual?"

"Probably," Gerry meets his eye through his reflection in the mirror. "It's got something to do with a map, I guess. A Leitner about cartography. I should probably stick around." He turns to face him properly then, leans up and in to kiss him quickly and carefully, wintergreen still tingling on his tongue. "Thank you. For being here and for helping me."

Michael smiles, bright and easy, and nods.

* * *

An Amateur Guide To Cartography gives Gertrude a splitting headache that lasts for hours after she sets it down, but does not otherwise erase her mind, as far as she can tell.

She creates two maps with her results.

One leads to an island that does not exist off the coast of Russia. She disassembles it immediately, carefully shuffles the notes into an order that can only be read as random, and files them into a worn folder, ready to be handed off. There is a hypothesis she must test before she can make any plans and she finds herself strangely conflicted between a desire to be right and a desire to be wrong.

The other map leads to somewhere else entirely. She tucks it away in her desk and locks the drawer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I genuinely love writing both Mary and Gertrude, despite not actually liking them as people. Also: if you hadn't already figured it out, things are going to start going down hill from here on out. I've updated the description to reflect chapter 15 as the end, which, if all goes according to plan, will wrap everything up. 
> 
> Only some small notes in this one, mostly of the headcanon variety.  
> \- Michael's grandmother's stories were, in fact, mostly based in actual folklore traditions but her telling of them was unique to her so if you were to actually ask Michael any of his favorite Irish folktales, he probably wouldn't be able to give you a very good answer. 
> 
> \- There is the first of several major time travel paradox points in this chapter, but it's kind of subtle! If you notice it, I'll be very excited. 
> 
> \- Sadly the Leitner described here isn't based on anything, but the idea that Gertrude and Peter were able to just get to Sannikov Land in canon, and that Gertrude just like, had a map to give to Michael that somehow worked, always pegged me as a little odd so this is my stab at patching it up. Also the idea of The Eye mostly negating The Spiral's influence is something I played really heavily with in another fic I wrote and I've become really attached to the idea.


	12. A sinking feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something isn't quite right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a slight rating bump here in this chapter for non-explicit discussion of sex. It's not really anything over PG-13 or the world's lightest R, but just a heads up!

Gerry can't help but feel like the air itself had changed, somehow, not just in the Archives but everywhere, after that encounter with Mary. He'd spent the rest of that day trying to keep his head down but even Emma had been more polite than usual to him, no more hard glares or put upon scoffs every time he so much as looked her way. Fiona doted on him even more, though he's certain (and Michael assures him) she's none the wiser -- she just has those instincts, apparently, the kind that cue her onto anyone and anything's bad mood. 

He spent the rest of that day with his brain full of static, fighting the sort of headache that comes after you cry or force yourself not to cry. He'd done his level best, sorting through any information he could find about Spiral-aligned Leitners, but came up with nothing of any overt value. The volume Gertrude was working with was unfamiliar to him -- or at least something he couldn't remember burning, and he was usually pretty good at keeping track of that sort of thing so he trusted his instincts here. Hours later, he'd produced practically nothing of value and wound up feeling a strange mixture of both defeat and relief. 

For whatever reason, he kept returning to the statements he'd found weeks ago, about the father and the son and the door that somehow seemed to connect them. There wasn't anything particularly unique about either case, but the idea of The Spiral being somehow both organized and aware enough to pull off something...intergenerational? If that was really what it was, felt...important, or significant, or something. It showed a level of direction and purpose that was unsettling given the context, even if Gerry didn't really understand the specifics. In all likelihood, he was just revisiting his earliest leads out of desperation more than inspiration. 

That, or his semi-antagonistic connection with The Eye was going haywire, which was always a possibility. Since joining the Institute proper The Eye had been trying harder than ever to worm its way into his head, but a lifetime's worth of training prevented it from taking too much of a hold, which could be both good and bad. He never wanted to actively or deliberately serve anything, but even he could admit that sometimes just _knowing_ things could be convenient. 

Though, if he was being honest, he hadn't felt so much as a tickle from The Eye since he'd arrived here. That was something he probably ought to be more concerned about but -- well, one crisis at a time. 

There was the distinct but bizarre possibility that The Eye had lost sight of him or something, when he'd jumped, and this added paranoia and anxiety was it slowly helping it regain signal strength or something, like he was a cell phone searching for service. Maybe. He honestly had no idea. 

Every time he thought he kind of figured out how any of the powers worked, they seemed to go out of their way to prove him wrong. 

One thing he is certain of, though, is the immediate and all encompassing feeling of relief that washes over him as he finally steps into Michael's flat that evening, locking the door behind him and finally letting himself properly exhale. 

It doesn't last.

Not two seconds through the door does Gerry remember that they haven't actually discussed Gertrude's plan or the book or what it might mean at all. Gerry doesn't necessarily want to keep avoiding it, but he also doesn't want to look directly at it. Too many possibilities, too many variables. 

Michael busies himself with cooking while Gerry tries not to wallow. The silence between them is easy and comfortable, but delicate -- too hard not to break. 

"If this works, and this Ritual either sends me home or paves the way to sending me home -- whatever Gertrude is hoping for -- what are you going to do?" 

May as well expose the wound to the air while it's still seeping. Let it scab. 

Michael looks up from where he's set the temperature on the oven. He doesn't seem surprised, but he isn't smiling. 

"I don't really know -- which I know isn't the answer either of us wants to hear," he comes to sit in the chair opposite Gerry at the table, the reverse of their position when they'd had that conversation weeks back. When Gerry had told him the truth. He takes one of Gerry's hands in his own, warmed by moving through the kitchen, working at the stove, and brings it to his lips, kissing the black ink eye on Gerry's middle finger. "I can't pretend how any of this is going to work and neither can you, so I guess our only course of action is to move one step at a time."

The thing about Michael, Gerry has realized, is that he has an endless capacity to try. For all his nervous energy and the anxiousness he projects everywhere, for as obvious as his blatant need to trust anyone who so much as looks at him is, he keeps allowing himself the luxury. Since that night, those first awkward kisses, Gerry has watched him unfold like a flower, exposing layer after layer -- most of which, Gerry knows, have probably never been seen by anyone before -- but at the heart of it all, it's always that. Michael Shelley, making his attempt, even when he's terrified and stumbling. Even when he's destined to fail. 

It's incredibly, outstandingly brave. 

It breaks Gerry's heart. 

"I want to take you with me, when I go." Gerry says, without thinking, his voice catching in his throat. 

Michael's eyes are gentle and so sad. "I know. I wish you could. I wish I could. But I don't think it works like that." 

He's right. They both know it. As much as they know nothing, they know that. 

Since all of this started, Gerry began developing a private sort of theory about the monster that wears Michael’s face back in his time. It’s impossible, he knows, but it still feels like it must be his fault, like maybe the entire creature itself were somehow the product of Gerry’s compromised psyche — a torture device made just for him on public display, and he’d only just learned about it now. 

It didn’t make any sense, but The Spiral rarely did. 

Thinking about it made him want to vomit. 

He can’t remember ever wanting to be wrong so badly, not even when he began to suspect the truth about his father’s murder. At least that dread had been coupled with a very bleak sense of relief — the knowledge that Mary was a monster to everyone and that it wasn’t somehow treatment he had earned all on his own.

How cynical. 

The timer on the oven cuts through the tension like a hot knife. Michael squeezes his hand one last time before he stands up. Gerry's not even sure what he's making. He's gotten a lot better at putting things together without relying on instructions from the back of boxes lately -- not that Gerry's standards are that high. It's easier, Michael explained, to cook for two rather than one. Makes him feel less guilty when he experiments and screws stuff up, and besides, it's nice to have someone else here as an 'impartial judge,' he joked when Gerry had asked. It was pretty bold of him to assume Gerry would ever tell him something he made was bad. 

He doesn't say that he honestly can't remember anyone ever cooking for him just because they wanted to and thought it was fun. Mary certainly never had. 

So no, he doesn't want to waste this. He can hear Tim's voice in his head telling him to get over his melancholy already, in a tone that somehow sounds like an eye roll. 'No sense wallowing in hypotheticals,' he'd say, 'you're already so gloomy as it is.' 

Gerry would probably flip him off at that, if he were actually here. But he wouldn't be wrong, was the thing. Tim might be a bit of a prick but he was rarely actually wrong. 

So for now, they'll eat, and then Gerry will do the dishes and do his best to stop thinking about things like inevitable ends. Then they'll curl up on the couch or maybe stumble into each other in the hall, all eager hands and giddy mouths and clumsy legs. 

That...was another thing Gerry didn't want to waste here in 1983. 

Sex with Michael was _good_ , in Gerry's extremely humble opinion. He felt a little self conscious even thinking about. It wasn't like he had the best barometer or anything, and neither of them had been particularly experienced, but it was good. Before -- back home -- Gerry had only ever looked at his body from a sort of third person perspective most of the time. He changed the things he could change, corrected the shapes that needed fixing, wore the clothes that he wanted, but it all felt very arms-length, like honing a tool to be used. He'd always had an extremely high tolerance for pain but had never attempted to balance it with pleasure, at least not physically. It just wasn't part of the world he'd established for himself. 

He'd tried to explain that, that first night he and Michael had tumbled into bed together, not expecting Michael to understand -- but he had. And they'd worked it out, after a few tries and no shortage of awkward moments -- which had ultimately proved another shining example of Michael's willingness to just keep trying. 

And as it turned out, they were both pretty quick studies. 

In the past weeks Gerry had learned that he actually really liked falling asleep touching another person, even being held, which he thought at first would freak him out a little, but didn't. He learned that he could actually laugh through an orgasm and that it felt incredibly bizarre but not in a bad way; and that he could also cry through one too, which was also, somehow, not bad, but arguably more bizarre. That last bit of new personal information had come when Michael had, almost on reflex, called him a 'good boy' while Gerry had been digging his teeth into the heel of his own hand, trying not to scream with his thighs around Michael's ears. Michael had felt so guilty after, it would have been adorable if it hadn't been so mortifying for the fifteen minutes or so it took for them to talk it over and sort their shit out. 

The important part was that they had sorted their shit out, which was another surprise. If anyone had asked Gerry six months ago if he could ever see himself as someone comfortable having frank and honest conversations about sex that involved him, face-to-face with another human, he probably would have given a very flat no and moved on. He didn't consider himself a prude or anything, it just wasn't a topic he ever imagined having much weight in his life. 

Maybe he contained multitudes, too. Who could have guessed. 

There was definitely some level of deeply cruel irony to the fact that he'd had to literally travel back in time via some sort of unfathomable anomaly, one that would likely end up killing him sooner or later, to learn this about himself -- but that was alright. 

At least for now. 

"You're thinking so loud." Michael's voice is soft in the dark, vibrating through his chest. "Where are you trying to go?"

Gerry shifts his head just enough to press a kiss to the prickly underside of Michael's jaw. "Nowhere." 

Michael runs a hand through Gerry's hair, lazy and slow. "Well, come back soon." 

"I'll try."

* * *

Gertrude presents both of them with notes -- badly smeared and warped photo copies of pages alongside handwritten clarifications. The Leitner, she explained, was unsurprisingly resistant to being understood, but she had done her best and now needed two more sets of eyes on what she had found to make sense of it. 

This did not ping Gerry as particularly odd -- though the fact she had openly and intentionally brought Michael into the process was a bit unexpected. Gerry had known, even back in this early days, that Gertrude had had Michael becoming a sort of point man for Spiral-related activity in the Archives. He'd never given it much thought, really. 

Though, now that he thinks about it in conjunction with the story Michael had shared, about his childhood run-in with a very supernatural door and subsequent statement, something does feel a little -- off? 

A lot has felt like that lately. Edges not quite matching where they ought to. 

It's not quite deja vu, but it's -- something. He doesn't like it at all. Every day it only seems to get worse, like there's a clock ticking down just outside of Gerry's line of vision. 

Asking Gertrude about the choice directly feels like a violation of Michael's trust and asking Michael to question Gertrude feels like a step too far, so he does his best to chalk the feeling up to his deeply ingrained and survival-based paranoia.

Figuring out any of the nonsense Gertrude had scraped out of the Leitner proves to be a frustrating and arduous task but better, he can assume, than trying to peel it directly from the Leitner itself. Michael's much better at it than Gerry, it turns out, or less susceptible to the effects of looking at the pages for too long, which is very helpful after Gerry has to take his fifth break in three hours to make sure he doesn't throw up. 

In that time, Michael finishes about twice as much as Gerry does and, by the end of a very long day, the two of them are able to cobble together what looks like a map to somewhere off the northern coast of Russia. 

Something about that sits strangely in Gerry's stomach, like it ought to be significant but isn't. 

"Looks like we're going to Russia," Michael says, dusting his hands off as they finally paste the last piece of the proverbial puzzle into place. "It'll be cold, but I bet it could be worse." 

Gerry tilts his head, which makes his vision swim a little, his inner ear still trying desperately to recalibrate. "Maybe you shouldn't -- Gertrude and I can probably handle it." It comes out of his mouth before he can really think to stop it, this sudden panicked sensation that maybe Michael should stay as far away as he can from this particular event, regardless of what it might mean for Gerry. 

Michael gives him a look, midway between amused and annoyed. "You'll forgive me for not being completely enthused with the idea of sending you off into the very literal mouth of the unknown when neither of us have any idea what that will mean for you." He pauses, searches Gerry's face while his own softens, just a hair. "I do know how to take care of myself, despite all evidence to the contrary. I'll be fine."

It's pointless to argue, Gerry knows. Ultimately having Michael with them would likely prove to be an asset -- when it came to stopping Rituals, too many hands were usually better than too few, even if he personally doesn't like it. And he is right -- if anything, Michael has proven time and time again over the last month or so that he doesn't deserve to be underestimated the way everyone, especially Gertrude, seems to. 

Doesn't mean he has to be thrilled with the idea, though.

He takes the completed map to Gertrude by himself later that evening, a little surreptitiously he'll admit, after Michael had been cornered into a conversation with Fiona about Meatball the cat. 

Gertrude is as unreadable as ever when he lays it on her desk. 

"Somewhere in Russia," Gerry explains, "I don't think it actually exists but I guess that's to be expected, all things considered. Getting there will take a while, but it should be possible with this."

She traces the route marked in red pen, notated in Michael's nearly illegible half-cursive handwriting with a finger. "It would seem that Mr. Shelley has some thoughts on the subject." 

That strange feeling in Gerry's gut comes back and he has to fight the knee-jerk impulse to lie, though he's not sure why or about what. "He knows what he's doing. He's good at his job."

"Hm. Indeed." She begins folding the map up to return it to the filing folder. "In time it is possible to find an application for anyone's skillset, of that we can be sure." For a split second, Gerry sees and hears double, like it's his mother sitting across from him rather than Gertrude Robinson. He doesn't like it. He doesn't like any of this. 

He thinks about what Michael said about Gertrude saving him from some sort of fate and feels the muscles in his neck tense. 

"I don't think Michael should come," Gerry says, practically blurts, "I don't think he needs to be there. We can handle it. You and I." 

Gertrude raises an eyebrow. "I appreciate the show of faith, Gerard, but I do not think this is going to be a simple two person job and you should be well aware, given your present circumstance, that underestimating The Spiral is in no one's best interest. Besides, as you said, Mr. Shelley can be full of surprises." 

It dawns on him that he's fallen into another of Gertrude's traps, somehow, one he can't even see the edges of but can feel closing in. He can't argue, not without backtracking or offering too much information he doesn't necessarily want to expose about things Michael told him in confidence and the creeping feeling of wrongness that keeps crawling into the base of his skull; about the way none of this seems to be adding up, but he can't say how or why.

"It will please you," Gertrude continues, as if she can't see the conflict in Gerry's eyes when he knows she damn well can, "to know that I have been given a few reliable reasons to believe that this ritual may actually be the key to getting you home." 

"Reliable reasons? From what?" She has to be lying, he knows. There's no way -- there's no such thing as 'reliable' in this context. But she's not -- there's nothing about her tone that seems to indicate any ulterior motive. Why would she tell him something like this if it weren't true? Why --

"It is unsavory business but I do have several contacts who are a bit more well versed in matters of the metaphysical than you or I. Spiders can be such pests, but they can also be very helpful when it comes to making plans for particular outcomes." She says it like she's letting Gerry in on a secret. It can't be that simple. 

"You're -- what, trying to manipulate The Web? What would it know about time or time travel or whatever is going on with The Spiral?" 

"More than you might expect," Gertrude says simply and with the sort of confidence that really brokers no room for argument. "Regardless, I am not in the business of trusting completely or easily, regardless of alignment, which is why I plan on taking the utmost precautions. I'm simply letting you know that it would be to your benefit to plan on this outing being a ticket home and to ensure that you don't leave any unfinished business behind." 

She's talking about -- what, his relationship with Michael? Saying his goodbyes? None of this feels -- it's _wrong_ somehow. He can't figure out why or how, but it's _wrong_. It's too easy or too overt or too _something_ but -- 

But. 

The part of his brain that doesn't sound like his mother chimes in that Gertrude may be ruthless and driven, but she's not without a heart, right? She's been helping him so far and not everyone's motivations deserve to be suspect at every turn. Being hard to read isn't a crime and it's not -- what would the point of lying about this actually be? If she didn't have reason to believe it would work, they could just go stop the ritual and continue on.

Of course there is the matter of actually _stopping_ the ritual, which suddenly seems like a much more pressing issue than Gerry's one-sided game of mental gymnastics. 

"Do we have a plan?" He asks, for lack of any better questions. 

"In due time," she says, as if it's the answer he'd been looking for.

* * *

Gertrude Robinson had not, in fact, contacted any agent or Avatar of The Web, though she did suspect that if she had, they could have provided her with some assurance, had she needed it.

She did not. 

It wasn't that she was particularly invested in saving one life by sacrificing another, she simply needed a way to stop The Spiral that would actually make an impact, and, well, while she was actually a firm believer in carefully inspecting the mouth of every gift horse she'd ever received, a time displaced Gerard Keay was an interesting variable indeed. 

And she was nothing if not pragmatic. If this particular gambit didn't work for whatever reason, she had a contingency plan. 

Ideally, it would not come to that. Ideally, her hypotheses would be proven true and stopping The Spiral would require nothing but a careful push in the direct direction. Ideally, this would all be over very soon and the world would continue existing as it did for the foreseeable future. 

But if it didn't, she was prepared to handle that, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry things are taking me a bit longer to edit and produce lately, especially since we're in the home stretch here! I've been really busy with boring, unrelated stuff and my actual day job involves writing so I get burnt out kind of easily these days. 
> 
> Also the real hard sci-fi shit is coming up here, so brace for weirdness and paradoxes! They're difficult to write but I'm pretty excited about it.
> 
> Only real notes for this one are about various HCs I have going into things like: I deeply love and am super invested in I guess what you could call sex that isn't really sexy. These two are so awkward and goofy with one another absolutely by design. Also this is a very subtle advancement of my 'Gerry has a praise kink' agenda because I'm nothing if not deeply self indulgent always.

**Author's Note:**

> If everything goes according to plan (it won’t) I’ll be doing weekly updates on this bad boy.


End file.
